Liber Null and the Psychonaut

LIBER NULL

PETER J. CARROLL

With Illustrations by Andrew David

To all those Psychonauts with whom I have stood in midnight^r^'^'/s',
in temples, in subterranean chambers, and atop mountains, invoking

the Mysteries . . .

Acknowledgments

I wish to gratefully acknowledge all the people who, over the
years, have helped make this book possible. To Ray Sherwin,
who helped make the first version of Liber Null available for
students of the lOT in 1978, and who worked with me to
produce the revised version of 1981; to Christopher Bray of
the Sorceror's Apprentice, who helped keep Liber Null in print
and produced a limited edition of Psychonaut, and who helped
by making these available to students through his bookstore; to
Andrew David, who did the illustrations for Liber Null; and to
Brian Ward, who did the illustrations for Psychonaut. My
thanks to you all. The present edition is a completely updated
and edited version, which makes both works available in one
binding.

Author's Note

Liber Null was written for he serious occult student, and
therefore contains some powerful rituals. These rituals and
exercises should be performed by readers who are in good health.
If one suffers from heart disease, epilepsy, or any chronic
disease, please do not use the material in this book. The author
and the pubhsher will not accept any responsibility for misuse
of this material, nor will they accept any responsibility for
anything that may occur when readers use the exercises
discussed here.

LIBER NULL

An lOT Publication

in Class 4°, 3° and 2°
Comprising
Liber MMM
Liber LUX
Liber NOX
Millenium
Liber AOM

Contents

Introduction

The Order and the Quest

Liber MMM

Mind Control

Magic

Dreaming

Liber LUX

Gnosis

Evocation

Invocation

Liberation

Augoeides

Divination

Enchantment

Liber NOX

Sorcery

The Double

Transmogrification

Ecstasy

Random Belief

The Alphabet of Desire

The Millenium

Liber AOM

Aetherics
Transubstantiation
The Chaos phere
Aeonics
Reincarnation

Introduction

The magic of the lOT is an intensely practical, personal,

experimental art. Two major themes run through this book:

that altered states of consciousness are the key to unlocking

one's magical abilities; and that these abilities can be developed

without any symbohc system except reality itself.

The magical style of thinking is explored with chapters on

alternative belief and the alphabet of desire.

A natural inclination toward the darker side of magic is as

good a point as any from which to begin the ultimate quest,

and half this book is devoted to the black arts.

Independently of ancient dusty books and mystification the

vital elements of many traditions conspire here to create a

living art.

The Illuminates of Thanateros are the magical heirs to the Zos

Kia Cultus and the A .'. A .'.

This book, written originally as a sourcebook for the lOT, is

now being released for those who wish to work alone and for

those seeking admission to the Order. Although the initiate is

referred to as "he" throughout, the reader should understand

that this is merely in keeping with the traditional style of

magical texts of this type, and that this course of study by no

means excludes women.

Shamanism

Egyptian
Babylonian

Tantra

Taoism

RosicTwciarusm

I

Bavarian
lUuminati

Hermetic Order
Go Wen Djifn

Freemasonry

John Dee

Ordo Templi
Orientis

T

Akister Crowley

2o5 Kia Culius
Austin O. Spare

^\.

r

Witchcraft

JOT

Gnosticism

Sufism

\

^

Knights
Templar

■v

i

J

K

Hermeticism
Alchemy

Mecitevoi
Goecw

j1

'

r

\

\

/■\

Sorcery

Diagram 1 . The survival of the magical tradition.

The Order and the Quest

The secrets of magic are universal and of such a practical
physical nature as to defy simple explanation. Those beings who
realize and practice such secrets are said to have achieved
mastership. Masters will, at various points in history, inspire
adepts to create magic, mystic, religious, or even secular orders
to bring others to mastership. Such orders have at certain times
openly called themselves the Illuminati; at other times secrecy
has seemed more prudent. The mysteries can only be
preserved by constant revelation. In this, the lOT continues a
tradition perhaps seven thousand years old, yet the Order in
the outer has no history, although it is constituted as a satrap
of the Illuminati.

In the Order with no past there is nowhere to conceal the
future from the present. It takes its name from the gods of sex,
Eros, and death, Thanatos. Apart from being humanity's two
greatest obsessions and motivating forces, sex and death
represent the positive and negative methods of attaining magical
consciousness. Illumination refers to the inspfration,
enlightenment, and liberation resulting from success with
these methods.

The specific purpose for which the lOT is constituted is to help
determining in what form the as yet embryonic fifth aeon will
manifest. Its task, although historic, consists in disseminating
magical knowledge to individuals. For at no time since the first
aeon has humanity stood in such need of these abilities to see
its way forward.

There is no formal hierarchy in the lOT. There is a division of
activity depending on ability as it develops.
Students strengthen thefr magical will against the strongest
possible adversary — thefr own minds. They explore the
possibilities of changing themselves at will and explore thefr
own occult abilities in dream and magical activity.
Initiates familiarize themselves with all forms of occult
attainment and seek to perfect themselves in some particular
form of magic. They should also find others capable of aspfring
to the Order and offer them help.

Adepts seek perfection in all aspects of personal magical
power, wisdom and liberation.

10

Masters seek to realize the aims of the Order by whatever
forms of action or non-action they deem appropriate.

Diagram 1 is an exposition of the survival of magical traditions
from the first aeon to the fifth. For an extended discussion of the
aeonics involved, consult "The Millenium" on page 88.

11

LIBER MMM

THE STUDENTSHIP

SYLLABUS OF THE

4°IOT

12

LIBER MMM

THIS COURSE IS an exercise in the disciplines of
magical trance, a form of mind control having
similarities to yoga, personal metamorphosis, and the
basic techniques of magic. Success with these techniques is a
prerequisite for any real progress with the initiate 3°
syllabus.

A magical diary is the magician's most essential and powerful
tool. It should be large enough to allow a full page for each day.
Students should record the time, duration and degree of success
of any practice undertaken. They should make notes about
environmental factors conducive (or otherwise) to the work.
Those wishing to notify the Order of their intention to begin the
work are invited to do so via the publisher.

13

MIND CONTROL

To work magic effectively, the ability to concentrate the
attention must be built up until the mind can enter a trance-like
condition. This is accomplished in a number of stages: absolute
motionlessness of the body, regulation of the breathing,
stopping of thoughts, concentration on sound, concentration
on objects, and concentration on mental images.

Motionlessness

Arrange the body in any comfortable position and try to remain
in that position for as long as possible. Try not to blink or move
the tongue or fingers or any part of the body at all. Do not let the
mind run away on long trains of thought but rather observe
oneself passively. What appeared to be a comfortable position
may become agonizing with time, but persist! Set aside some
time each day for this practice and take advantage of any
opportunity of inactivity which may arise.
Record the results in the magical diary. One should not te
satisfied with less than five minutes. When fifteen have been
achieved, proceed to regulation of the breathing.

Breathing

Stay as motionless as possible and begin to deliberately make
the breathing slower and deeper. The aim is to use the entire
capacity of the lungs but without any undue muscular effort or
strain. The lungs may be held empty or full between exhalation
and inhalation to lengthen the cycle. The important thing is
that the mind should direct its complete attention to the
breath cycle. When this can be done for thirty minutes,
proceed to not-thinking.

Not-Thinking

The exercises of motionlessness and breathing may improve
health, but they have no other intrinsic value aside from
being a preparation for not-thinking, the beginnings of the
magical trance condition. While motionless and breathing

14

deeply, begin to withdraw the mind from any thoughts which
arise. The attempt to do this inevitably reveals the mind to be
a raging tempest of activity. Only the greatest determination
can win even a few seconds of mental silence, but even this is
quite a triumph. Aim for complete vigilance over the arising of
thoughts and try to lengthen the periods of total quiescence.
Like the physical motionlessness, this mental motionlessness
should be practiced at set times and also whenever a period of
inactivity presents itself. The results should be recorded in your
diary.

The Magical Trances

Magic is the science and art of causing change to occur in
conformity with will. The will can only become magically
effective when the mind is focused and not interfering with the
will. The mind must first discipline itself to focus its entire
attention on some meaningless phenomenon. If an attempt is
made to focus on some form of desire, the effect is short
circuited by lust of result. Egotistical identification, fear of
failure, and the reciprocal desire not to achieve desire, arising
from our dual nature, destroy the result.

Therefore, when selecting topics for concentration, choose
subjects of no spiritual, egotistical, intellectual, emotional, or
useful significance — meaningless things.

Object Concentration

The legend of the evil-eye derives from the ability of wizards
and sorcerers to give a fixed dead stare. This ability can be
practiced against any object — a mark on a wall, something in
the distance, a star in the night sky — anything. To hold an
object with an absolutely fixed, unwavering gaze for more than
a few moments proves extraordinarily difficult, yet it must be
persisted in for hours at a time. Every attempt by the eye to
distort the object, every attempt by the mind to find something
else to think of, must be resisted. Eventually it is possible to
extract occult secrets from things by this technique, but the
ability must be developed by working with meaningless
objects.

15

Sound Concentration

The part of the mind in which verbal thoughts arise is brought
under magical control by concentration on sounds
mentally imagined. Any simple sound of one or more syllables
is selected, for example, Aum or Om, Abrahadabra, Yod He
Van He, Aum Mani Padme Hum, Zazas Zazas, Nasatanada
Zazas. The chosen sound is repeated over and over in the mind
to block all other thoughts. No matter how inappropriate the
choice of sound may seem to have been, you must persist with
it. Eventually flie sound may seem to repeat itself automatically
and may even occur in sleep. These are encouraging signs.
Sound concentration is the key to words of power and certain
forms of spell casting.

Image Concentration

The part of the mind in which pictorial thoughts arise is
brought under magical control by image concentration. A
simple shape, such as a triangle, circle, square, cross, or
crescent, is chosen and held in the mind's eye, without
distortion, for as long as possible. Only the most determined
efforts are likely to make the imagined form persist for any
time. At first the image should be sought with the eyes closed.
With practice it can be projected onto any blank surface. This
technique is the basis of casting sigils and creating
independent thought forms.

The three methods of attaining magical trance will only yield
results if pursued with the most fanatical and morbid
determination. These abilities are highly abnormal and usually
inaccessible to human consciousness, as they demand such
inhuman concentration, but the rewards are great. In the
magical diary, record each day's formal work and whatever
extra opportunities have been utilized. No page should be left
blank.

Metamorphosis

The transmutation of the mind to magical consciousness has
often been called the Great Work. It has a far-reaching purpose
leading eventually to the discovery of the True Will. Even a
slight ability to change oneself is more valuable than any

16

power over the external universe. Metamorphosis is an
exercise in willed restructuring of the mind.

All attempts to reorganize the mind involve a duality between
conditions as they are and the preferred condition. Thus it is
impossible to cultivate any virtue like spontaneity, joy, pious,
pride, grace, or omnipotence without involving oneself in
more conventionality, sorrow, guilt, sin, and impotence in the
process. Religions are founded on the fallacy that one can or
ought to have one without the other. High magic recognizes the
duahstic condition but does not care whether hfe is bittersweet
or sweet and sour; rather it seeks to achieve any arbitrary
perceptual perspective at will.

Any state of mind might arbitrarily be chosen as an objective for
transmutation, but there is a specific virtue to the ones given.
The first is an antidote to the imbalance and possible madness
of the magical trance. The second is a specific against obsession
with the magical practices in the third section. They are:

1) Laughter/Laughter

2) Non-attachment/Non-disinterest

Attaining these states of mind is accomphshed by a process of
ongoing meditation. One tries to enter into the spirit of the
condition whenever possible and to think about the desired
result at other times. By this method, a strong new mental habit
can be established.

Consider laughter: it is the highest emotion, for it can contain
any of the others from ecstacy to grief. It has no opposite.
Crying is merely an underdeveloped form of it which cleanses
the eyes and summons assistance to infants. Laughter is the
only tenable attitude in a universe which is a joke played upon
itself.

The trick is to see that joke played out even in the neutral and
ghastly events which surround one. It is not for us to question
the universe's apparent lack of taste. Seek the emotion of
laughter at wnat delights and amuses, seek it in whatever is
neutral or meaningless, seek it even in what is horrific and
revolting. Though it may be forced at first, one can learn to
smile inwardly at all things.

17

Non-attachment/Non-disinterest best describes the magical
condition of acting without lust of result. It is very difficult for
humans to decide on something and then to do it purely for its
own sake. Yet it is precisely this ability which is required to
execute magical acts. Only single -pointed awareness will do.
Attachment is to be understood both in the positive and
negative sense, for aversion is its other face. Attachment to
any attribute of oneself, one's personality, one's ambitions,
one's relationships or sensory experiences — or equally,
aversion to any of these — will prove limiting.
On the other hand, it is fatal to lose interest in these things for
they are one's symbolic system or magical reality. Rather, one
is attempting to touch the sensitive parts of one's reality more
lightly in order to deny the spoiling hand of grasping desire and
boredom. Thereby one may gain enough freedom to act
magically.

In addition to these two meditations there is a third, more
active, form of metamorphosis, and this involves one's
everyday habits. However innocuous they might seem, habits
in thought word, and deed are the anchor of the personality.
The magician aims to pull up that anchor and cast himself free
on the seas of chaos.

To proceed, select any minor habit at random and delete it
from your behavior: at the same adopt any new habit at
random. The choices should not involve anything of spiritual,
egocentric, or emotional significance, nor should you select
anything with any possibility of failure. By persisting with such
simple beginnings you become capable of virtually anything.
All works of metamorphosis should be committed to the
magical diary.

18

MAGIC

Success in this part of the syllabus is dependent on some degree
of mastery of the magical trances and metamorphosis. This
magical instruction involves three techniques: ritual, sigils, and
dreaming. In addition, the magician should make himself
familiar with at least one system of divination: cards, crystal
gazing, runesticks, pendulum, or divining rod. The methods
are endless. With all techniques, aim to silence the mind and
let inspiration provide some sort of answer. Whatever symbolic
system or instruments are used, they act only to provide a
receptacle or amphfier for inner abilities. No divinatory system
should involve too much randomness. Astrology is not
recommended.

Ritual is a combination of the use of talismanic weapons,
gesture, visualized sigils, word spells, and magical trance. Before
proceeding with sigils or dreaming, it is essential to develop an
effective Banishing Ritual. A well-constructed banishing
ritual has the following effects. It prepares the magician more
rapidly for magical concentration than any of the trance
exercises alone. It enables the magician to resist obsession if
problems are encountered with dream experiences or with sigils
becoming conscious. It also protects the magician from any
hostile occult influences which may assail him.
To develop a banishing ritual, first acquire a magical
weapon — a sword, a dagger, a wand, or perhaps a large ring.
The instrument should be something which is impressive to the
mind and should also represent the aspirations of the
magician. The advantages of hand forging one's own
instruments, or discovering them in some strange way, cannot
be over-emphasized. The banishing ritual should contain the
following elements as a minimum.

First, the magician describes a barrier about himself with the
magical weapon. The barrier is also strongly visualized. Three
dimensional figures are preferable. See figure 1 on page 20.
Second, the magician focuses his will on a visualized image: for
example, the image of the magical weapon, or his own
imaginary third eye, or perhaps a ball of hght inside his own

19

Figure 1. Different forms of three-dimensional barriers that the
magician can create using the magical weapon.

head. A sound concentration may additionally or alternatively

be used.

Third, the barrier is reinforced with power symbols drawn with

the magical weapon. The traditional five -pointed star or

pentagram can be used, or the eight-pointed star of Chaos, or

any other form. Words of power may also be used.

Fourth, the magician aspires to the infinite void by a brief but

determined effort to stop thinking.

Sigils

The magician may require something which he is unable to
obtain through the normal channels. It is sometimes possible to
bring about the required coincidence by the direct intervention
of the will provided that this does not put too great a strain on
the universe. The mere act of wanting is rarely effective, as the
will becomes involved in a dialogue with the mind. This
dilutes magical ability in many ways. The desire becomes part
of the ego complex; the mind becomes anxious of failure. The
will not to fulfill desire arises to reduce fear of failure. Soon the
original desire is a mass of conflicting ideas. Often the wished for
result arises only when it has been forgotten. This last fact is the
key to sigils and most forms of magic spell. Sigils work because
they stimulate the will to work subconsciously, bypassing the
mind.

There are three parts to the operation of a sigil. The sigil is
constructed, the sigil is lost to the mind, the sigil is charged. In
constructing a sigil, the aim is to produce a glyph of desire,

20

a) Word method. I wish to obtain the Necronomicon
(Eliminate repeated letters)

IWSHTOBAMECRM

4b

Letters Rearranged
to give pictorial sigil

b) Pictorial method, to restrain adversary

:km>

a ^—^s.

Finishe
d sigil

c) Mantrical spell method

XWAH hi^9s M£l>fl(ftSUK}iL £m^f^i^jfh\
jrwPtH H^HSK b'SUK

(Rearrange)

Finished mantra

Figure 2. Creating a sigil by A) the word method, B) the
pictorial method, and C) the mantrical method.

21

stylized so as not to immediately suggest the desire. It is not
necessary to use complex symbol systems. Figure 2 shows how
sigils may be constructed from words, from images, and from
sounds. The subject matter of these spells is arbitrary and not
reconmiended. To successfully lose the sigil, both the sigil form
and the associated desire must be banished from normal waking
consciousness. The magician strives against any manifestation
of either by a forceful turning of his attention to other matters.
Sometimes the sigil may be burnt, buried, or cast into an ocean.
It is possible to lose a word spell by constant repetition as this
eventually empties the mind of associated desire. The sigil is
charged at moments when the mind has achieved quiescence
through magical trance, or when high emotionality paralyzes
its normal functioning. At these times the sigil is concentrated
upon, either as a mental image, or mantra, or as a drawn form.
Some of the times when sigils may be charged are as follows:
during magical trance; at the moment of orgasm or great elation;
at times of great fear, anger, or embarrassment; or at times when
intense frustration or disappointment arises. Alternatively,
when another strong desire arises, this desire is sacrificed
(forgotten) and the sigil is concentrated on instead. After
holding the sigil in the mind for as long as possible, it is wise to
banish it by evoking laughter.

A record should be kept of all work with sigils but not in such a
way as to cause conscious deliberation over the sigilized desire.

22

DREAMING

The dream state provides a convenient egress into the fields of
divination, entities, and exteriorization or "out of the body"
experience. All humans dream each night of their lives, but
few can regularly recount their experiences even a few minutes
after waking. Dream experiences are so incongruous that the
brain learns to prevent them interfering with waking
consciousness. The magician aims to gain full access to the
dream plane and to assume control of it. The attempt to do
this invariably involves the magician in a deadly and bizzare
battle with his own psychic censor, which will use almost any
tactics to deny him these experiences.

The only method of gaining full access to the dream plane is to
keep a book and writing instrument next to the piace of sleeping
at all times. In this, record the details of all dreams as soon as
possible after waking.

To assume conscious control over the dream state, it is
necessary to select a topic for dreaming. The magician should
start with simple experiences, such as the desire to see a
particular object (real or imaginary) and master this before
attempting divination or exteriorization. The dream is set up
by strongly visualizing the desired topic in an otherwise
silenced mind, immediately before sleep. For more complex
experiences the method of sigils may be employed.
A record of dreams is best kept separate from the magical
record as it tends to become voluminous. However any
significant success should be transferred into the magical
diary.

Though one may get to fear the sight of it, a properly kept
magical record is the surest guarantor of success in the work of
Liber MMM: it is both a work of reference with which to
evaluate progress and most significantly, a goad to further
effort.

23

The Initiate Syllabuses

3° lOT
LIBER Lux, LIBER Nox

The magic art may be subdivided in many ways: by the ethical
tone of the intent, by the morahstic quahties of the effects, into
high and low, and so on. The division favored here is more
temperamental. White Magic leans more toward the
acquisition of wisdom and a general feeling of faith in the
universe. The Black form is concerned more with the acquisition
of power and is reflective of a basic faith in oneself. The end
results are likely to be not dissimilar, for the paths meet in a
way impossible to describe.

Initiates are at liberty to work with material from either or
both. The so-called middle way, or path of knowledge,
consisting of the acquisition of secondhand ideas, is an excuse
to do neither and leads nowhere.

24

LIBER Lux

BEING THE INITIATE 3° Syllabus of the Magical Order
of the Illuminates of Thanateros in White Magic, the
subject is divided in accordance with the schema
shown in figure 3, and we discuss the theoretical aspects of
Chaos, Kia, Duality, Aether, and Mind.

Duality describes humanity's usual condition. Happiness exists
only because of misery, pain because of comfort, good because of
evil, yang because of yin, black because of white, birth because
of death, and existence because of non-existence. All
phenomena must be paired, as the senses are only equipped to
perceive differences. The thinking mind has the property of
splitting everything it encounters into two, as it is a dualistic
thing itself.

Augoeide^

A

Lib^ratic

eration
Diviruition / \ Enchanmem

Invocation Evocation

Figure 3. The schema of Liber Lux.

25

Yet there is a part of man which is of a singular nature,
although the mind is unable to perceive it as such. Man
considers himself a center of will and a center of perception.
Will and perception are not separate but only appear so to the
mind. The unity which appears to the nind to exert the twin
functions of will and perception is called Kia by magicians.
Sometimes it is called the spirit, or soul, or life force, instead.
Kia cannot be experienced directly because it is the basis of
consciousness (or experience), and it has no fixed qualities
which the mind can latch on to. Kia is the consciousness, it is
the elusive "I" which confers self-awareness but does not seem
to consist of anything itself. Kia can sometimes be felt as ecstacy
or inspiration, but it is deeply buried in the dualistic mind. It is
mostly trapped in the aimless wanderings of thought and in
identification with experience and in that cluster of opinions
about ourselves called ego. Magic is concerned with giving the
Kia more freedom and flexibility and with providing means by
which it can manifest its occult power. Kia is capable of
occult power because it is a fragment of the great life force
of the universe.

Consider the world of apparent dualisms we inhabit. The mind
views a picture of this world in which everything is double. A
thing is said to exist and exert certain properties. Being and
Doing. This calls for the concepts of cause and effect or
causality. Every phenomenon is seen to be caused by some
previous thing. However this description cannot explain Idw
everything exists in the first place or even how one thing
finally causes another. Obviously things have originated and
do continue to make each other happen. The "thing"
responsible for the origin and continued action of events is
called Chaos by magicians. It could as well be called God or Tao,
but the name Chaos is virtually meaningless, and free from the
childish, anthropomorphic ideas of religion.
Chaos is also the force which adds increasing complexity to the
universe by spawning structures which were not inherent in its
component parts. It is the force which has caused life to evolve
itself out of dust, and is currently most concentratedly manifest

26

in the human hfe force, or Kia, where it is the source of
consciousness.

Kia is but a small fragment of the great life force of the
universe, which contains the twin impulses to immerse itself in
duality and to escape from duality. It will continuously
reincarnate until the first impulse is exhausted. The second
impulse is the root of the mystic quest, the union of the
liberated spirit with the great spirit. To the extent that the Kia
can become one with Chaos it can extend its will and
perception into the universe to accomplish magic.
Between Chaos and ordinary matter, and between Kia and the
mind, there exists a realm of half formed substance called
Aether. It is dualistic matter but of a very tenuous, probabilistic
nature. It consists of all the possibilities which Chaos throws
out which have not yet become solid realities. It is the
"medium" by which he "non-existent" chaos translates itself
into "real" effects. It forms a sort of backdrop out of which real
events and real thoughts materialize. Because aetheric events
are only partially evolved into duahstic existence, they may
not have a precise location in space or time. They may not have
a precise mass or energy either, and so do not necessarily affect
the physical plane. It is from the bizarre and indeterminate
nature of the aetheric plane that Chaos gets its name, for
Chaos cannot be known directly.

From the aetheric realm of nascent possibility only what we call
sensible, causal, probable, or normal events usually come into
existence. Yet as centers of Kia or Chaos ourselves, we can
sometimes call very unlikely coincidences or unexpected
events into existence by manipulating the aether. Such is
magic. Even the physical sciences have begun to blunder into
the aetheric with their discoveries of quantum indeterminacy
and virtual processes in subatomic matter.
It is the aether, which surrounds the central core of the life
force, with which the magician is concerned. Its normal
function is as a Kia -thought intermediary, yet its properties are
so infinitely mutable that almost anything can be
accomphshed with it. Thought gives it shape and Kia gives
it power.

Thus are will and perception extended into areas of time and
space beyond the physical limitations of the material body.

27

It is the very mutability of the aetheric which has given rise to
such a bewildering variety of magical activity and supportive
thought forms all over the universe. The differences, however,
are only superficial. When stripped of local symbolism and
terminology, all systems show a remarkable uniformity of
method. This is because all systems ultimately derive from the
tradition of Shamanism.

It is toward an elucidation of this tradition that the following
chapters are devoted.

28

GNOSIS

Altered states of consciousness are the key to magical powers.
The particular state of mind required has a name in every
tradition: No-mind. Stopping the internal dialogue, passing
through the eye of the needle, ain or nothing, samadhi, or one-
pointedness. In this book it will be known as Gnosis. It is an
extension of the magical trance by other means.
Methods of achieving gnosis can be divided into two types. In the
inhibitory mode, the mind is progressively silenced until only a
single object of concentration remains. In the excitatory mode,
the mind is raised to a very high pitch of excitement while
concentration on the objective is maintained. Strong
stimulation eventually elicits a reflex inhibition and paralyzes
all but the most central function — the object of concentration.
Thus strong inhibition and strong excitation end up creating
the same effect — the one -pointed consciousness, or gnosis.
Neurophysiology has finally stumbled on what magicians
have known by experience for millenia. As a great master once
observed: "There are two methods of becoming god, the upright
or the averse." Let the mind become as a flame or a pool of still
water. It is during these moments of single -pointed
concentration, or gnosis, that beliefs can be implanted for
magic, and the life force induced to manifest. Table 1 on page
33 shows a number of methods that can be used to attain it.
The Death Posture is a feint at death to achieve an utter
negation of thought. It can take many forms, ranging from the
simple not- thinking exercise up to complex rituals. A very fast
and simple method consists of blocking the ears, nose and
mouth, and covering the eyes with the hands. The breath and
thoughts are forcefully jammed back until near
unconsciousness involuntarily breaks the posture. Alternatively,
one may arrange oneself before a mirror at a distance of about
two feet and stare fixedly at the image of one's eyes in the
mirror with an unblinking, corpselike gaze. The effort required
to keep an absolutely unwavering image will of itself silence
the mind after a while.

29

30

Table 1. The Physiological Gnosis

Inhibitory Mode

Excitatory Mode

Death posture

Sexual excitation

Magical trance
Concentration

Emotional arousal
e.g., fear, anger,
and horror

Sleeplessness

Fasting

Exhaustion

Pain, torture
Flagellation
Dancing, drumming
Chanting

Gazing

Right way of walking

Hypnotic or

Trance inducing drugs

Excitatory or

Disinibitory

Drugs,

Mild hallucinogens.

Forced over-breathing

Sensory deprivation

Sensory overload

Sexual excitation can be obtained by any preferred method. In
all cases there has to be a transference from the lust required to
ignite the sexuality to the matter of the magical working at
hand.

The nature of a sexual working lends itself readily to the
creation of independent orders of being — evocation. Also in
works of invocation where the magician seeks union with
some principle (or being), the process can be mirrored on the
physical plane; one's partner is visuahzed as an incarnation of
the desired idea or god. Prolonged sexual excitement through
karezza, inhibition of orgasm, or repeated orgasmic collapse
can lead to trance states useful for divination. It may be

31

necessary to regain one's original sexuality from the mass of
fantasy and association into which it mostly sinks. This is
achieved by judicious use of abstention and by arousing lust
without any form of mental prop or fantasy. This exercise is
also therapeutic. Be ye ever virgin unto Kia.
The concentrations leading to magical trance are discussed in
Liber MMM. Emotional arousal is me obverse form of this
method. Emotive arousal of any sort can theoretically be
used, even love or grief in extreme circumstances, but in
practice only anger, fear, and horror can easily be generated
in sufficient strengths to achieve the requisite effect. The well-
known ability of fear and anger to paralyze the mind indicates
their effectiveness, yet the magician must never lose sight of
the objectives of his working. Nothing is to be gained and
much may be lost by reducing oneself to jibbering idiocy or
catatonia.

Sleeplessness, fasting, and exhaustion are old monastic
favorites. There should be a constant turning of the mind toward
the object of the exercise during these practices. Pain, torture,
and flagellation have been used by witches, monks, and fakirs
to achieve results. Surrender to pain brings eventual ecstasy and
the necessary one-pointedness. However, if the organism's
resistance to pain is high, needless damage to the body may
result before the threshold is crossed.

Dancing, drumming, and chanting require careful arranging
and preparation to bring the participants to a climax. Lyrical
exaltation through emotive poetry, incantation, song, prayer,
or supphcation can also be added. The whole is best controlled
by some form of ritual. Over-breathing is sometimes used to
supplement the effects of dancing or leaping.
The right way of walking is not a technique for achieving
immediate results but a meditation which helps the mind to
stop thinking. One walks for long stretches without looking at
anything directly but by slightly crossing and unfocusing the
eyes, maintaining a peripheral view of everything. It should be
possible to remain cognizant of everything within a 180 degree
arc from side to side and from the tips of he toes to the sky.
The fingers should be curled or clasped in unusual positions to
draw attention to the arms. The mind should eventually become
totally absorbed in its environment and thinking will cease.

32

Gazing is the inhibitory variant of the above technique. The
entire attention is directed to the sight of some object in the
environment while the body is kept motionless. Any natural
phenomenon — plants, K)cks, sky, water, or fire — may be
used.

There is no magic drug which will by itself have the required
effect. Rather drugs can be used in small doses to heighten the
effect of excitation caused by the methods already discussed. In
all cases a large dose leads to depression, confusion, and a general
loss of control. Inhibitory drugs must be considered with even
more caution because of their inherent danger. They often
simply sever the life force and body altogether.
Sensory overload is achieved when a battery of techniques are
used together. For example, in certain tantric rites the
candidate is first beaten by his guru, hashish is forced down him,
and he is taken at midnight to a dark cemetery for sacred
sexual intercourse. Thus he achieves union with his god.
Sensory deprivation is the essence of the monastic cell, the
mountain cave, the walled-up hermit, and rites of death,
burial, and resurrection. Much the same effect can be
achieved with hoods, blindfolds, earplugs, repetitive sounds,
and restricted movements. It is far more effective to
completely obliterate all sensory inputs for a short period than to
simply reduce them over a longer one.

Certain forms of gnosis lend themselves more readily to some
forms of magic than others. The initiate is encouraged to use
his own ingenium in adapting the methods of exaltation to his
own purposes.

Note however that inhibitory and excitatory techniques can be
employed sequentially, but not simultaneously, in the same
operation.

33

EVOCATION

Evocation is the art of dealing with magical beings or entities
by various acts which create or contact them and allow one
to conjure and command them with pacts and exorcism.
These beings have a legion of names drawn from the
demonology of many cultures: elementals, famihars, incubi,
succubi, bud-wills, demons, automata, atavisms, wraiths,
spirits, and so on. Entities may be bound to talismans, places,
animals, objects, persons, incense smoke, or be mobile in the
aether. It is not the case that such entities are limited to
obsessions and complexes in the human mind. Although such
beings customarily have their origin in the mind, they may be
budded off and attached to objects and places in the form of
ghosts, spirits, or "vibrations," or may exert action at a distance
in the form of fetishes, familiars, or poltergeists. These beings
consist of a portion of Kia or the life force attached to some
aetheric matter, the whole of which may or may not be
attached to ordinary matter.

Evocation may be further defined as the summoning or creation
of such partial beings to accomplish some purpose. They may be
used to cause change in oneself, change in others, or change in
the universe. The advantages of using a semi-independent
being rather than trying to effect a transformation directly by
will are several: the entity will continue to fulfill its
function independently of the magician until its life force
dissipates. Being semi- sentient, it can adapt itself to a task in
a way that a non-

<1> V

Figure 4. Creating an elemental by

combining appropriate symbols to form a sigil.

34

conscious simple spell cannot. During moments of the
possession by certain entities the magician may be the
recipient of inspirations, abilities, and knowledge not
normally accessible to him.

Entities may be drawn from three sources — those which are
discovered clairvoyantly, those whose characteristics are given
in grimoires of spirits and demons, and those which the
magician may wish to create himself.

In all cases estabhshing a relationship with the spirit follows a
similar process of evocation. Firstly the attributes of the entity,
its type, scope, name, appearance and characteristics must be
placed in the mind or made known to the mind. Automatic
drawing or writing, where a stylus is allowed to move under
inspiration across a surface, may help to uncover the nature of
a clairvoyantly discovered being. In the case of a created being
the following procedure is used: the magician assembles the
ingredients of a composite sigil of the being's desired attributes.
For example, to create an elemental to assist him with
divination, the appropriate symbols might be chosen and made
into a sigil such as the one shown in figure 4.
A name and an image, and if desired, a characteristic number
can also be selected for the elemental.

Secondly, the will and perception are focused as intently as
possible (by some gnostic method) on the elemental's sigils or
characteristics so that these take on a portion of the magician's
life force and begin autonomous existence. In the case of pre-
existing beings, this operation serves to bind the entity to the
magician's will.

This is customarily followed by some form of self -banishing, or
even exorcism, to restore the magician's consciousness to
normal before he goes forth.

An entity of a low order with little more than a singular task to
perform can be left to fulfill its destiny with no further
interference from its master. If at any time it is necessary to
terminate it, its sigil or material basis should be destroyed and
its mental image destroyed or reabsorbed by visualization. For
more powerful and independent beings, the conjuration and
exorcism must be in proportion to the power of the ritual

35

which originally evoked them. To control such beings, the

magicians may have to re-enter the gnostic state to the same

depth as before in order to draw their power.

Any of the techniques of the gnosis can in theory be used in

evocation. An analysis of some of the more common methods

follows.

Theurgic Ritual depends solely on visualization and
concentration on complex ceremonial to achieve focus.
However the effect of increasing the complexity is often to
create more distraction rather than draw attention to the
matter at hand. Will becomes multiple and the result is often
disappointing. Conjura-tion by prayer, supplication or command
is rarely effective unless the appeal be desperate or prolonged
till exhaustion ensues. This type of ritual can be improved by
the use of poetic exaltation, chanting, ecstatic dancing, and
drumming.

The Goetic tradition of the grimoires uses an additional
technique. Terror. The grimoires were compiled by Catholic
priests, and much of what they wrote was deliberate
abomination in their own terms. Transport the whole rite to a
graveyard or crypt at midnight and one has compounded a
powerful mechanism for concentrating the Kia by paralyzing the
peripheral functions of the mind by fear. If the magician can
maintain control under these conditions his will is singular and
mighty.

The Ophidian tradition uses sexual orgasm to focus the will and
perception. It is interesting to note that poltergeist activity
invariably centers around the sexually disturbed, usually
children at puberty or, more rarely, women at menopause.
During these periods of acute tension, intense excitation can
channel the mind and allow the life force to manifest frustration
outside of the body by hurling objects around.

To perform evocation by the Ophidian method, the attributes
of an entity in sigihzed form are concentrated on at orgasm and
may be afterward anointed with the sex fluids. The process is
rather like the deliberate creation of an obsession. If enough
power can be put into it, it will be capable of independent
existence.

36

Incubi and succubi are pre-existing entities created by other
peoples' pathological sexuality. Incubi traditionally seek sexual
intercourse with living females and succubi with males, often
in sleep. However both forms are almost invariably male
though succubi may make some shght attempt to disguise
themselves as females. Unfortunately they are both predatory
and stupid, with little power or motivation for anything but
sex.

Sacrifice has been used in the past to create fear or terror, or
to invoke the gnosis of pain in support of Goetic type
evocations. However, this method easily exhausts itself and
the sorcerer may end up wading in oceans of blood, much as
the Aztecs did, for very little result. Blood sacrifice is most
effective and most easily controlled by the use of one's own
blood, which is customarily allowed to fall upon the sigil or
talisman of the demon. However, the power to control blood
sacrifice usually brings with it the wisdom to avoid it in
favor of other methods.

Conjuration to visible appearances to prove to oneself, or
others, the objective reality of spirits is an ill-considered act.
The conditions necessary for its appearance will always allow
the retention of the belief that such things are the result of
hypnosis, hallucination or delusion. Indeed they are an
hallucination, for such things do not normally have a physical
appearance and have to be persuaded to assume one. Fasting,
sleep, and sensory deprivation combined with drugs and clouds
of incense smoke will usually provide a demon with sufficiently
sensitive and malleable media in which to manifest an image
if commanded to do so.

The medieval idea of a pact is an over-dramatization, but it
contains a germ of truth. All one's thoughts, obsessions, and
demons must be reabsorbed before Kia can become one with
Chaos. However useful such things may be to him in the short
term, the sorcerer must eventually recant.

37

38

INVOCATION

The ultimate invocation, that of Kia, cannot be performed.
The paradox is that as Kia has no duahzed quahties, there are
no attributes by which to invoke it. To give it one quahty is
merely to deny it another. As an observant dualistic being
once said:

/ am that I am not.

Nevertheless, the magician may need to make some
rearrangements or additions to what he is. Metamorphosis may
be pursued by seeking that which one is not, and transcending
both in mutual annihilation. Alternatively, the process of
invocation may be seen as adding to the magician's psyche
any elements which are missing. It is true that the mind must be
finally surrendered as one enters fully into Chaos, but a
complete and balanced psychocosm is more easily surrendered.
The magical process of shuffling behefs and desires attendant
upon the process of invocation also demonstrates that one's
dominant obsessions or personality are quite arbitrary, and
hence more easily banished.

There are many maps of the mind (psychocosms), most of
which are inconsistent, contradictory, and based on highly
fanciful theories. Many use the symbology of god forms, for all
mythology embodies a psychology. A complete mythic
pantheon resumes all of man's mental characteristics.
Magicians will often use a pagan pantheon of gods as the basis
for invoking some particular insight or ability, as these myths
provide the most explicit and developed formulation of the
particular idea's extant. However it is possible to use almost
anything from the archetypes of the collective unconscious to
the elemental qualities of alchemy.

If the magician taps a deep enough level of power, these forms
may manifest with sufficient force to convince the mind of the
objective existence of the god. Yet the aim of invocation is
temporary possession by the god, communication from the god.

39

ft

^7 ^B

— A

^^ A

V

A

E)

I ¥ I
c? I \

I O I

F)

®

Figure 5. An assortment of psycocosms or mental maps. Magicians
may wish to invoke some of the qualities represented by the symbols
in each. Here we see A) the seven classical planetary forms; B) the
four classical elements; C) the three alchemical elements; D) the
Taoist yin-yang; E) the five Vedic tattwas; F) the eleven Kabbalistic
sephiroth; G) the eight Taoist trigrams; and H) the twelve
astrological qualities.

40

and manifestation of the god's magical powers, rather than the
formation of rehgious cults.

The actual method of invocation may be described as a total
immersion in the qualities pertaining to the desired form. One
invokes in every conceivable way. The magician first
programs himself into identity with the god by arranging all his
experiences to coincide with its nature. In the most elaborate
form of ritual he may surround himself with the sounds,
smells, colors, instruments, memories, numbers, symbols,
music, and poetry suggestive of the god or quality. Secondly he
unites his life force to the god image with which he has united
his mind. This is accomplished with techniques from the gnosis.
Figure 5 shows some examples of maps of the mind. Following
are some suggestions for practical ritual invocation.

Example Invocation of the War God

The initiate stands in a pentagonal chamber lit by five red
lamps. He is robed in crimson and the skin of a great bear or
wolf. He is girded about with weapons of steel, and an iron
crown (or helmet) adorns his head. He has prepared his body by
fasting, by rigors, by scourging, and by stimulants. He has
constantly turned his mind to things of Mars during the
preparations.

He casts sulphur, oak, and acris resins into the thurible and
anoints his body with tiger balm. He beats a martial air upon a
drum to open the temple, or else fires a loud weapon into the
air. He has banished all foreign influences from the mind by
what means he may (a pentagram ritual being preferred).
Drawing blood from his right shoulder with a dagger, he
traces the sigil of Mars on his breast and the Eye of Horns on his
brow. With a sharp sword, he draws the symbols of Mars about
him in his mind's eye in lines of crimson fire and visualizes
himself in the form of the god Horns.

Then he begins his war dance while an assistant, if he has one,
continues to beat the rhythm, apply the scourge, or discharge
firearms.

41

Martial music may be played by some machine. As he dances
wildly to his god he chants:

lo Horus Horus!
Horns to me come!
GEBURAZARPE!
Thou art me Horus!
I am thee Horus!

This he continues until the god taketh him into an ecstacy.

Note that any of these props can be dispersed with by anyone
whose Kia flows steadily into the willed artifacts of
imagination.

There is no limit to the inconceivable experiences into
which the intrepid psychonaut may wish to plunge himself.
Here are some ideas for constructing a latter day black mass
as a blasphemy against the gods of logic and rationality. The
Great Mad Goddess Chaos, a lower aspect of the ultimate
ground of existence in anthropomorphic form, can be
invoked for Her ecstasy and inspiration.

Drumming, leaping, and whirling in free form movement are
accompanied by idiotic incantations. Forced deep breathing is
used to provoke hysterical laughter. Mild hallucinogens and
disinhibitory agents (such as alcohol) are taken together with
sporadic gasps of nitrous oxide gas. Dice are thrown to
determine what unusual behavior and sexual irregularities will
take place. Discordant music is played and flashing lights splash
onto billowing clouds of incense smoke. A whole maelstrom of
ingredients is used to overcome the senses. On the altar a great
work of philosophy, preferably ty Russell, lies open, its pages
fiercely burning.

Satum, the God of Death, might be invoked in the following
manner. The initiate first prepares himself by fasting,
sleeplessness, and exhaustion. He retires to chamber, which is in
near total darkness, being illuminated only by three sticks of a
resinous, cloying, musty incense. He weighs his body down by
wrapping sheets of lead around his limbs, trunk, and head.
Otherwise his body is cold and naked. To a slow, monotonous
drumbeat, he conducts a mock burial of himself. With extreme
caution he may take small quantities of atropine -like solanum

42

alkaloids. Then he meditates on himself in the aspect of a
corpse or skeleton arising slowly from the tomb in a tattered
winding sheet and assuming his scythe of office.
In works of invocation, nothing succeeds like excess.

43

LIBERATION

In creating life out of the primeval slime, Chaos has always
sought to increase its possibilities of expression and to diversify
its manifestations. During the evolution of life there have been
many stagnant periods and some reversals. But overall, the
inherent superiority of the most flexible, adaptable, inclusive,
and complex creatures, cultures, men, and ideas always wins
out. To seek these qualities is to achieve more liberation than
any bizarre feat of renunciation or reorganization of political
power is likely to create.

It is a mistake to consider any belief more liberated than
another. It is the possibility of change which is important.
Every new form of liberation is destined to eventually become
another form of enslavement for most of its adherents. There is
no freedom from duality on this plane of existence, but one may
at least aspire to choice of duality.

Liberating behavior is that which increases one's possibilities for
future action. Limiting behavior is that which tends to narrow
one's options. The secret of freedom is not to be drawn into
situations where one's number of alternatives becomes limited
or even unitary.

This is an abominably difficult path to tread. It means stepping
outside of one's own culture, society, relationships, family
personality, beliefs, prejudices, opinions and ideas. It is just
these comforting chains which seem to give definition,
meaning, character, and a sense of belonging to most people.
Yet, in casting off one set of chains, one cannot avoid adopting
another set unless one wishes to live in a very reduced and
impoverished style — itself a limitation.

The solution is to become omnivorous. Someone who can
think, believe, or do any of a half dozen different things is more
free and liberated than someone confined to only one
activity.

For this reason Sufi mystics were required to master a handful of
secular trades in addition to their occult studies.

44

45

Chief among the techniques of hberation are those which
weaken the hold of society, convention, and habit over the
initiate, and those which lead to a more expansive outlook.
They are sacrilege, heresy, iconoclasm, bioaestheticism, and
anathe-mism.

Sacrilege: Destroying the Sacred

Energy is liberated when an individual breaks through rules of
conditioning with some glorious act of disobedience or
blasphemy. This energy strengthens the spirit and gives
courage for further acts of insurrection. Put a brick through
your television; explore sexualities which are unusual to you.
Do something you normally feel to be utterly revolting. You are
free to do anything, no matter how extreme, so long as it will
not restrict your own or somebody else's future freedom of
action.

Heresy: Alternative Definitions

By seeking out ideas which seem bizarre, crazy, extreme,
arbitrary, contradictory, and nonsensical you will find that the
ideas you previously clung to as reasonable, sensible and
humanitarian are actually just as bizarre, crazy, and so on.
Whatever is suppressed, restricted, ridiculed, or despised, almost
always contains a telling counterpoint to mainstream ideas. In
argument always disagree, especially if your opponent begins
to voice your own opinions.

Iconoclasm: Breaking Images

Immense gulfs exist in human affairs between theory and
practice, means and ends. Contrast pornography and romance,
cordon bleu gluttony and skeletal famine, dignity and
masturbation. Consider violence as entertainment. Mass
slaughter for idealism's sake. Look at what goes on in the
name of religion and the consumer society. Relish the
cacophony of neurosis, fantasy, and psychosis which guides
material sensationalist culture to an uncertain end. Picking
through society's dirty underwear, we discover its real habits.
You can extend this list indefinitely and indeed you should.

46

For human folly is without limit though society does much to
disguise its darker side. Cynicism, sadness or laughter is the
magician's privilege.

Bioaestheticism: The Body

There is a thing more trustworthy than all the sages, and
which contains more wisdom than a great library. Your own
body. It asks only for food, warmth, sex and transcendence.
Transcendence, the urge to become one with something
greater, is variously satisfied in love, humanitarian works, or in
the artistic, scientific, or magical quests of truth. To satisfy these
simple needs is liberation indeed. Power, authority, excessive
wealth and greed for sensory experience are aberrations of
these things.

47

Anathemism: Self-destruction

Sidestepping conventionally still leaves you with a mass of
prejudices, idiosyncrasies, identifications, and preferences
which give comfort and definition to the personality or ego. An
idea cannot be said to be completely understood till you
understand the conditions under which it is not true. Similarly
you cannot be said to possess a personality until you are able
to manipulate or discard it at will.

Anathemism is a technique practiced directly upon yourself.
Eat all loathsome things till they no longer revolt. Seek
union with dl that you normally reject. Scheme against your
most sacred principles in thought, word and deed. You will
eventually have to witness the loss or putrefaction of every
loved thing. Therefore, reflect upon the transitory and
contingent nature of all things. Examine everything you
believe, every preference, and every opinion, and cut it
down.

The personality, a mask of convenience, becomes stuck to the
face. Eye becomes clouded by "I." The human spirit becomes a
trivial mess of petty identifications. The most cherished
principles are the greatest lies. "I think therefore I am." But what
is "I"? The more you think, the more the I closes. Thinking, "I
am alseep"; my I is blinded. The intellect is a sword, and its use
is to prevent identification with any particular phenomenon
encountered. The most powerful minds cling to the fewest fixed
principles. The only clear view is from atop the mountain of
your dead selves.

48

AUGOEIDES

The magician's most important invocation is that of his Genius,
Daemon, True Will, or Augoeides. This operation is
traditionally known as attaining the Knowledge and
Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. It is sometimes
known as the Magnum Opus or Great Work.
The Augoeides may be defined as the most perfect vehicle of
Kia on the plane of duality. As the avatar of Kia on earth, the
Augoeides represents the true will, the raison d'etre of the
magician, his purpose in existing. The discovery of one's true
will or real nature may be difficult and fraught with danger,
since a false identification leads to obsession and madness.
The operation of obtaining the knowledge and conversation is
usually a lengthy one. The magician is attempting a progressive
metamorphosis, a complete overhaul of his entire existence.
Yet he has to seek the blueprint for his reborn self as he goes
along. Life is less the meaningless accident it seems. Kia has
incarnated in these particular conditions of duality for some
purpose. The inertia of previous existences propels Kia into new
forms of manifestation. Each incarnation represents a task, or a
puzzle to be solved, on the way to some greater form of
completion.

The key to this puzzle is in the phenomena of the plane of
duality in which we find ourselves. We are, as it were, trapped in
a labyrinth or maze. The only thing to do is move about and
keep a close watch on the way the walls turn. In a completely
chaotic universe such as this one, there are no accidents.
Everything is signifcant. Move a single grain of sand on a
distant shore and the entire future history of the world will
eventually be changed.

A person doing his true will is assisted by the momentum of the
universe and seems possessed of amazing good luck. In
beginning the great work of obtaining the knowledge and
conversation, the magician vows "to interpret every
manifestation of existence as a direct message from the infinite
Chaos to himself personally."

49

To do this is to enter the magical world view in its totality. He
takes complete responsibility for his present incarnation and
must consider every experience, thing, or piece of information
which assails him from any source, as a reflection of the way he
is conducting his existence. The idea that things happen to one
that may or may not be related to the way one acts is an illusion
created by our shallow awareness.

Keeping a close eye on the walls of the labyrinth, the
conditions of his existence, the magician may then begin his
invocation. The genius is not something added to oneself.
Rather it is a stripping away of excess to reveal the god
within.

Directly on awakening, preferably at dawn, the initiate goes to
the place of invocation. Figuring to himself as he goes that
being bom anew each day brings with it the chance of greater
rebirth, first he banishes the temple of his mind by ritual or by
some magical trance. Then he unveils some token or symbol or
sigil which represents to him the Holy Guardian Angel. This
symbol he will likely have to change during the great work as
the inspiration begins to move him. Next he invokes an image
of the Angel into his nind's eye. It may be considered as a
luminous duplicate of one's own form standing in front of or
behind one, or simply as a ball of brilliant light above one's
head. Then he formulates his aspirations in what manner he
will, humbling himself in prayer or exalting himself in loud
proclamation as his need be. The best form of this invocation is
spoken spontaneously from the heart, and if halting at first, will
prove itself in time. He is aiming to establish a set of ideas and
images which correspond to the nature of his genius, and at the
same time receive inspiration from that source. As the
magician begins to manifest more of his true will, the
Augoeides will reveal images, names, and spiritual principles
by which it can be drawn into greater manifestation.
Having communicated with the invoked form, the magician
should draw it into himself and go forth to live in the way he
hath willed.

The ritual may be concluded with an aspiration to the wisdom
of silence by a brief concentration on the sigil of the
Augoeides, but never by banishing. Periodically more elaborate
forms of ritual, using more powerful forms of gnosis, may be
employed.

50

At the end of the day, there should be an accounting and fresh
resolution made. Though every day be a catalog of failure, there
should be no sense of sin or guilt. Magic is the raising of the
whole individual in perfect balance to the power of Infinity,
and such feelings are symptomatic of imbalance.
If any unnecessary or imbalanced scraps of ego become
identified with the genius ty mistake, then disaster awaits. The
life force flows directly into these complexes and bloats them
into grotesque monsters variously known as the demon
Choronzon. Some magicians attempting to go too fast with
this invocation have failed to banish this demon, and have
gone spectacularly insane as a result.

51

DIVINATION

Space, time, mass, and energy originate from Chaos, have their
being in Chaos, and through the agency of the aether are
moved by Chaos into the multiple forms of existence.
Some of the various densities of the aether have only a partial or
probabhstic differentiation into existence, and are somewhat
indeterminate in space and time. In the same way that mass
exists as a curvature in space-time, extending with a gradually
diminishing force to infinity that we recognize as gravity, so do
all events, particularly events involving the human mind,
send ripples through all creation.

Various methods of intercepting and interpreting these ripples
constitute the mantic art or divination. These ripples tirough
space and time can only be received if they strike a note of
resonance in the receiver and are not drowned out by noise or
suppressed by the psychic sensor. Some forms of resonance
exist naturally, as between a mother and child, or between
lovers. Otherwise, they have to be established by
concentrating on the object of divination.
The general level of mental noise can be suppressed by
silencing the mind by some gnostic method. This also assists
with the concentration. The inhibitory mode of the gnosis is
most frequently used. Sleeplessness, fasting, and exhaustion may
cause prescience through visions, but as with drugs, there is
always the difficulty of maintaining concentration. Any form
of magical trance can be adapted for divination by first
directing an intense concentration toward the desired matter of
divination (or some sigilized form of it) and then allowing
impression to arise into the Vacuous state of consciousness.
Many of the excitatory techniques can be used, but some with
difficulty. Augury may be made by sacrifice, and men have
tortured themselves for knowledge, but sex is the easiest.
Erotocomatose lucidity (or sex-trance) describes a condition
brought about by continually stimulating and exhausting the
sexuality by any possible means until the mind enters the
borderland state between consciousness and unconsciousness.

52

So far, only direct prescience, the ideal of divination, has been
discussed. This is not always possible, and recourse must
often be had to the use of symbolic intermediaries. These can
augment the practice of divination greatly or ruin it utterly.
Assuming that the magical perception can forge some sort of
tenuous connection with the answer to a question, symbols are
shuffled, drawn, or selected in some manner to carry the answer
into the conscious mind. Then a further effort must be made in
the interpretation to get that magical perception to come into
complete manifestation. Symbols are easy to come by; any
system can be used — the difficulty lies in forging the magic
link. In obtaining the symbolic result, the magician tries to let
the magic slip through below the level of conscious control, but
must not let the process become merely random. For example,
in cartomancy or Tarot divination, one should look through the
pack first and then shuffle but lightly, or the result will be
completely random, and the chances of the spread being able
to stimulate the magical perception will be reduced.
Once the symbol has been obtained, it should be used to help the
magical perception crystallize more fully. It should become a
basis for lateral thinking (or intuitive guesswork) rather than as
a final answer to be mechanically interpreted.
Astrology is not a valid form of magical divination because it
assumes a causal relationship between events which are linked
only very weakly if at all. If the relationship were strong, then
astrology would be an ordinary secular science. As the
relationship is very weak, astrology owes whatever success it has
to the natural prescience of its practitioners and obscures its
failures with imprecision, evasiveness and ambiguity.
The best methods of obtaining symbolic intermediate results are
those which are just below the threshold of deliberateness, but
above the threshold of pure randomness. Shamanistic type
methods involving the casting of bones, stones, or sticks
marked with runes are simplest and best. As methods involving
the fall of coins or dice, the separation of yarrow stalks and
their rules for interpretation became progressively more
complex the more remote the prescient ability became. Highly
complex mathematical systems represent decadence of the art.
Of all the forces which obstruct divination, none has more
power over the civilized consciousness than what is called the
psychic censor. This is the same factor which denies us access

53

to most of our dream experiences and prevents us from being
overwhelmed by the milhons of sensory impressions which
bombard our body ceaselessly. Although we could not function
without it, it is useful to be able to turn parts of it off at times.
Hallucinogenic drugs knock it out unselectively and are not
much use.

The magician must begin to notice all coincidences which
surround him, instead of dismissing them. Often one notices
that just before somebody said something, or an event
occurred, one knew it would happen. This can happen several
times a day, but we somehow, almost unbelievably, manage to
dismiss it each time and not connect the occurrences together.
If a definite effort is made to consciously note these
occurrences as well as to record them in the magical diary,
they start to become much more numerous. So many
coincidences occur that it is ridiculous to use the word
coincidence at all. One is becoming prescient.

54

ENCHANTMENT

Magical will may exert its effects directly on the universe, or it
may use symbols or sigils as intermediaries. The creation of
direct effects, like prescience in divination, represents a high
point in the art and is just as elusive. Making things happen by
either method is referred to as the art of enchanting or the
casting of enchantments.

From a magical point of view, it is axiomatic that we have
created the world in which we exist. Looking about himself,
the magician can say "thus have I willed," or "thus do I
perceive," or more accurately, "thus does my Kia manifest."

It may seen strange to have willed such limiting
circumstances, but any form of dualistic manifestation or
existence implies limits. If the Kia had willed a different set of
limitations, it would have incarnated elsewhere. The tendency
of things to continue to exist, even when unobserved, is due to
their having their being in Chaos. The magician can only
change something if he can "match" the Chaos which is
upholding the normal event. This is the same as becoming one
with the source of the event. His will becomes the will of the
universe in some particular aspect. It is for this reason that people
who witness real magical happenings at close range are
sometimes overcome with nausea and may even die. The part
of their Kia or life force which was upholding the normal
reality is forcibly altered when the abnormal occurs. If this type
of magic is attempted with a number of people working in
perfect synchronization, it works much better. Conversely, it is
even more difficult to perform in front of many persons, all of
whom are upholding the ordinary course of events.
In trying to develop the will, the most fatal pitfall is to
confuse will with the chauvinism of the ego. Will is not
willpower, virility, obstinancy, or hardness. Will is unity of
desire.

Will expresses itself best against no resistance when its action
passes unnoticed. Only when the mind is in a state of multiple
desire do we witness the idiot agonizations of will-power.

55

Pitting oneself against various oaths, abstentions, and tests is

merely to set up conflicts in the mind. The will always

manifests as the victory of the strongest desire, yet the ego

reacts with disgust if its chosen desire fails.

The magician therefore seeks unity of desire before he attempts

to act. Desires are re-arranged before an act, not during it. In all

things he must live like this. As reorganization of belief is the key

to liberation, so is reorganization of desire the key to will.

In practice, many difficulties can be gotten around by using

various types of sigil. The desire is represented by some

pictorial glyph, by a wax image to be wounded, bound, or

healed, by the characters of a magical alphabet, or by some

image in the mind's eye.

All these serve as a focus for the will. Concentration on these

spells should be augmented by some form of gnostic exaltation

to cast the enchantment.

When considering any form of enchantment, remember this: it

is infinitely easier to manipulate events while they are still

embryonic or at their inception. Thus d)es the magician turn

that aspect of Chaos which manifests as causality to his

advantage, rather than oppose it. The desire then manifests as a

convenient, but strange, coincidence, rather than as a startling

discontinuity.

The will may be strengthened by one other technique aside

from the concentrations of magical trance, and that is by luck.

The magician should observe the current of his luck in small,

inconsequential matters, find the conditions for its success,

and try to extend his luck in various small ways.

He who is doing his true will is assisted by the momentum of

the universe.

56

LIBER NOX

BEING THE INITIATE 3° Syllabus of the Magical Order
of the Illuminates of Thanateros in Black Magic, this
subject is divided up in accordance with the schema
shown in figure 6. We will begin by discussing the Spirit of
Black Magic. Magical power is the key to the heaven-hell
of the now. Unaware of this, many slip into the
unsatisfactory greyness of small fears and small desires
confused. Then they invent pleasurable or painful hereafters to
replace the present. The life force seeks ever the flesh, body,
ideas, emotions, experiences, etc., through endless
incarnations. For without the flesh, Kia has no mirror for
itself, and there is no awareness, no ecstacy, nothing.

The Double Sorcery

Desire

Transmogrification
Figure 6. The schema of Liber Nox.

57

58

It is either this nothing or the flesh, and the condition of the
flesh is dual. Eternal warfare is the price, purpose, and reward of
existence.

Kia evolves into a myriad of experiences, and these are all Self.
They are all forms of our awareness. To oppose the great
dualities like sex and death, or pain and pleasure, the great
evolution of Kia, with lesser fears and desires, is the beginning
of failure of satisfaction.

Existence is the great indulgence. Anything less than this, any
attempt to avoid part of oneself is to invite loss of form, a self-
negation leading to a shrinkage of spirit.

The Self alone is God and should recognize itself in all things.
For those who uphold limited values bind themselves to
mediocrity and failure. Those who self -righteously value their
own contradictions are mighty on this earth. Our dual nature is
all morality; it is foolish to be other than we are. Acceptance
and living without restraint I will call the highest virtue.
The greatest sinners are the greatest saints, though they may
be unconscious of this. Great men are greatly dual. And
doubleness is not the end of it. Every moment the consortium
of "I" puts forward a new face. 1 am not who I was seconds
ago, much less yesterday. Our name is multiple. I am a colony
of beings sharing the same envelope. And Kia, the self-love
which binds them together, will one day hurl them apart —
attempting even death for its satisfaction.
What is a god but man wielding the force of Chaos? To him
nothing is true; everything is permitted. There is no purpose in
his existence; he is free to choose his own. He has bound
himself to earth forever and reincarnates at will. For the
universe is mad and arbitrary in her ways. Nothing is
unchangeable except change itself. The only universal principle
is the universal lack of principle. Yet the Great Goddess Chaos
will lend some of Her power to those who can become Her
favorites.

And must our dualities be kept in coexistent separation to
retain the power of satisfaction? The small pleasures of the
gourmet, semidigested, overripe, putrefying food have come
almost full circle to the consumption of excrement, with little
satisfaction. Rather would I take plain wholesome food for the

59

body, and taste the nectars of revulsion and delight but

occasionally.

Reserve Kia for works of inspiration, ecstacy, and magic.

Seeking pleasure is the surest invocation of displeasure, one

falls back rapidly into the general greyness. But if an

emotion be pushed to the furthest realms of non-necessitation,

then there is nothing to balance ecstacy but ecstacy.

Gnosis is the mechanism by which Kia draws back from the

flesh in preparation for the mighty indulgences of magic. A

great saving to accomplish a greater spending.

Kia is nascent energy seeking form. It has been called the

Great Desire, the Life Force, or Self -Love. It can be represented

by Atu 0, the Tarot Fool, or the Joker. Its heraldic beast is

the vulture, for it ever descends to take its satisfaction among

the living and the dead.

The experience I received was this, that my innermost self or

soul or spirit

Was no thing

formless without quality

nameless

pure power.

Yet it was anything that it touched,

I am this illusion

and

I am not this illusion

Amen.

60

SORCERY

Sorcery is the art of using material bases to effect magical
transformations. The advantage of using such material bases is
that the power residing in them can be built up over a period.
Four main types of material base are used. Those which contain
reserves of a partic ular type of power such as fetishes, talismans,
spirit traps and amulets; those which act to carry some effect to
its target like powders, philtres, wax images, and knotted cords;
those which act as a basis to receive divinatory impressions; and
those which act as an anchor for some aetheric form which can
be sent like a magical weapon. In addition, blood and semen
may be used as sources of the life force. Various other bodily
secreta and excreta: hair, fingernails, spittle, etc., can be used to
provide magical links with target persons.
Talismans, amulets and fetishes are charged by a process
analogous to evocation. Talismans are usually the recipient of
some simple charge that evokes strength, courage, health,
virility, no-mind, sleep, or some other emotion, or state of
power in its possessor when he concentrates on it. If the
tahsman is well enough made, it should continue to evoke its
effect even when it is not being used for concentration. The
form and composition of the material base should be
suggestive of the desired effect. Amulets are objects
containing a portion of the aetheric and life force with a
particular task to perform and are semi- sentient. They can only
be created by the strongest forms of evocation. They are
fashioned in the form of a small man or creature, and during
the evocation an aetheric duplicate is placed inside the material
form. They are most commonly made to protect places or
persons within a short radius of action. When such things are
created by a group or tribe of persons over a long period, they
are known as fetishes.

Any sort of material base is a spirit trap in some way, but some
substances, notably crystals, absorb aetheric imprints very
readily. Quartz crystals, which are large and readily available,
can be used to pick up impressions by leaving them near
charged places, persons, or objects. If a spirit or elemental is

61

discovered to be inhabiting some place it can be trapped by
plunging a crystal into its form.

Enchantment by sorcery is carried out with the aid of various
powders, philtres, concoctions, wax images, and knotted cords.
The material base can be composed of anything suggestive of
the desired result and may include possessions or parts of the
body of the intended victim. As the material base is being
compounded, the magician does everything possible with
concentration, visualization, and gnostic exaltation to imprint
his desire into it. The charged matter is then taken and placed
where the victim will come in contact with it.
Instruments of sorcery also find their uses in the mantic art.
Most divinatory tools serve only to receive impressions from
the operator's magical perception. Charged instruments
contain a residium of formless aetheric energy which actually
amplify the impressions. Most devices in this class are magical
mirrors, crystal spheres, highly pohshed surfaces, and pools of
dark liquid or blood. The Mirror of Darkness is an instrument
fashioned from black glass or natural obsidian.
It should be carried concealed close to the body. It may be
charged by using it as a focus for concentration in the magical
trance of no-mindedness. One gazes into it unwaveringly for
long periods until it opens like a pit or tunnel beneath one.
Only after this aetheric tunnel has developed is the mirror of
darkness ready for use. The perception reaches through the
tunnel as the will directs it to other regions of time and
space.

Magical weapons are created by building an aetheric duplicate
of some existing device such as a wand, sword, dagger,
pointed bone, or dart. The aetheric form is kept inside the
material base until projected forth by a strong focusing of the
win. Skilled sorcerers are able to reach through the mirror of
darkness to the target or victim and hurl the magical weapon
down after it. Close proximity or even contact with the target
is otherwise required.

Personal blood sacrifice may be made to a magical weapon, or it
may be made the focus of an orgiastic rite and anointed with
sexual fluids. But with or without these adjuncts, it is intense,
prolonged concentration which imbues these devices with
power.

62

Amulets and weapons of great power are sometimes given
personal names by which they are controlled. Sometimes such
devices have acted quite independently of the incompetents
into whose hands they occasionally fall.

63

THE DOUBLE

The double is described in all magical traditions from ancient
Shamanism, through the Egyptian "Ka" and the "Ki" of occult
martial arts to ideas of the soul or ghost and in the modem
occult concept of the astral body. It is most commonly seen or
experienced when the physical body passes close to death.
It does not have a definite fixed shape, although there is a
natural tendency for the life force to hold it in the same image
as the physical body. Even when it is exteriorized in the body's
image it is not necessarily visible to ordinary perception. Like all
aetheric matter, its effects on ordinary reality are variable and
depend on the ability of the life force to make a real effect
coalesce at some point. Thus, the double is able to penetrate
solid matter, but at other times it may have a degree of
tangibility and be able to effect material happenings.
In the occult martial arts, it is projected just beyond the
striking surfaces of the body by visualization and a sharp yell
which accompany the physical blow. A portion of the aetheric
force may even be left inside the opponent to cause what is called
the delayed death touch. The force may also be projected
beyond the body to inform one of the movement of enemies
behind and projected to the body's surfaces toward off blows. In
most forms of psychic healing, this same force is projected,
commonly through the hands.

The double may also be made to take on various alternative
forms, most commonly animal form. Theriomorphic (beast-
like) manifestations of the double are often atavistic. They cause
a form of possession by the behavior patterns of the animal
concerned. These pattems may lie dormant in our memory, or it
may be that we have access to aetheric memories. Whatever
their source, these atavisms create terrifying effects. Even if the
aetheric beast form is kept within the physical body, it may
manifest as strange physical prowess, the ability to cower wild
animals and confuse and frighten we humans. Projected beyond
the body it can serve as a vehicle for the consciousness to
experience the mode of travel and abilities of the animal.

64

Skilled magicians may attempt bizarre composite forms like
gryphons and basilisks as magical vehicles.
In the normal cycle of birth and death, the life force carries
little or nothing from one incarnation to the next. The
projection of the double is the basis of deliberately carrying
things over into a new incarnation at death.
Of all the techniques of gaining access to the double, narcosis is
the least controllable and most dangerous. Nevertheless, since
time immemorial magicians have been smearing themselves
with pastes compounded from the solanaceae alkaloids,
thomapple, nightshade and henbane, and consuming various
other hallucinogens and trance inducing drugs as well, just for
this purpose. Visualization is the weakest technique used on its
own, but it can act as a model on which to build that peculiar
bodily sensation which comes from movements in the aether.
Sometimes it is felt as heat, as a sort of itching, or as an ache.
One can only persist with imagining something until a
sensation develops. Sharp, high pitched yells and exhalations
of breath are used to help project the force in martial arts and
occult yogas.

Dreaming is the most challenging and complete method of
freeing the double. Ordinary dreams are an ingenius jumble of
half-forgotten events, hopes and worries. They are a more
graphic form of the mental chattering, fantasizing, and
daydreaming that the waking mind does. In the same way that
the day mind learns to differentiate between real things and
fantasy, so can the dream consciousness learn the difference
between real and fantasy dreams.

Real dreams are the key to the double. The first step in
creating the double is to estabhsh it in a real dream The hands
are the most easily visible part of the body. Dream
consciousness is particularity linked to the sense of sight. The
magician strives to see the hands of his double in dream. The
desire to do this is concentrated on intently before sleep every
night for as long as it takes success to crown one's work. During
this time the hands may feature in many ordinary, idle dreams
which may become very complex and bizarre. This is not the
desired result.

Success is an abrupt and discontinuous experience. The
command to see one's hands is suddenly remembered as one

65

realizes one is dreaming. Suddenly the hands are there in full
clear view. The shock is like being rudely awakened from
daydreaming or bursting through a membrane. To prevent the
shock causing awakening, the experience should be
repeated several times.

Then the magician resolves that he will see a particular place
that he visits in his waking hours also. Summoning his hands in
dream, he looks at them, then moves them aside and tries to find
the place he has willed to go to. If the vision begins to fade, he
goes back to his hands and tries again. He must strive to get all
the details of the place correct and to be there at the same time
of day that the dream takes place. Eventually he will find that
the double actually is at the desired location. When this much
has been attained there is no limit to what he may eventually
achieve. Yet one must be prepared to devote every night of the
rest of one's life to developing these powers.

66

TRANSMOGRIFICATION

The metamorphosis to black magical consciousness.

Chaos, the hfe force of the universe, is not human-hearted.

Therefore the wizard cannot be human-hearted when he seeks

to tap the force of the universe. He performs monstrous and

arbitrary acts to loosen the hold of human limitations upon

himself.

The magical life demands the abandonment of comfort,

conventionality, security and safety — for competition,

combat, extremes, and adversity are needed to produce higher

resolutions and personal evolution. An air of desperation is

required in a life lived close to the edge. One must be living

by one's wits.

In a stagnant environment the body-mind creates its own

adversity — disease and fantasy.

Only in extremes can the spirit discover itself. A fluid
environment is required as a vessel for magical consciousness.
Only a fluid environment can conform to beliefs about it and be
subject to the subtle magic forces. Only in mutable
circumstances can divination come into its own.

Therefore abandon all fixed patterns of residence,
employment, relationship and taste.

Among the titles of Kia is Anon. Anon freely transmogrifies its
arbitrary personality, refusing any identity defined by its
environment. Residing in the ultimate freedom possible on the
plane of illusion, it has choice of duality. Everything which
exists for it is a form of desire, for this is the universe in which
it willed to incarnate. If this were believed to be either heaven
or hell one would feel free to do anything. It is only the fear
that it is neither which imprisons us.

The idea of mind or ego as a fixed attribute or possession of
Self is illusory. All that can be said of Kia is that the amount of
meaning one experiences is proportional to Kia's manifestation
in one's circumstances.

67

Figure 7. The Sigil of Chaos is the sole symbol employed by the
magical order of the Illuminates of Thanateros as a device of
recognition, and as a mirror of darkness for communication between
its adepts.

Kia is felt as meaningfulness, power, genius, and ecstasy in

action. Outside of this nothing is true.

The wizard doeth as he wilt on this illusory plane, knowing that

nothing is more important than anything else and that

anything he does is only a gesture. He is thus free to do anything

as though it mattered to him. Acting without lust of result,

he achieves his will.

In the arena of Anon compete numerous selves, souls, familiar

spirits, demons, obsessions, and an infinity of possible

experiences. Each game is short, and then the pieces are hurled

through death into unrecognizable new configurations.

Only the style and spirit of Anon's play survive

transmogrification, unless the aetheric body has achieved great

integration.

The acts of the Black Magician will bind him to earth

forever, but — if he be fearful of his ability to find his way back

to his previous occult learning, he may strongly visualize the

sigil of Chaos shown in figure 7 at his death.

68

ECSTASY

Being a resume of the Quadriga Sexualis, a series of somatic
trances involving the Death Posture and Rites of Thanateros.
The science and art of the sacred ahgnments between the
magical will and certain forms of gnostic exaltation are
shown in figure 8. The pinnacle of excitation and the cave of
absolute quiescence are the same place magically and
physiologically. In that hidden dimension of one's being hangs
the hawk vulture of the Self (or Kia), free of desire, yet ready
to hurl itself into any experience or act.

The endless variations of the gnosis of quiescence are all the
death posture, but the following may be of particular use in part
or whole:

Kneeling in the dragon position, hands flat on thighs, spine
erect, the initiate stares fixedly at the image of his own eyes
in a large mirror before him, about two feet away. The
temple is best completely featureless, black or white. He
may have prepared himself previously by concentration on
one of the magical trances, or by some intense effort of
convergent thinking.

Gazing at his own eyes the initiate stops thinking. No
amount of "effort" in the usual sense will avail. Infinite
patience will barely suffice. The attention must be
continually turned to the eye image until the thinking
eventually gives up. Any sort of distortion of the image is
symptomatic of thinking and to be avoided.
Success is characterized by certain phenomena for which
it is useless to strive. There may be a loss of physical
perspective or body image. The body may begin to feel vast
or microscopic. These phenomena are characteristic of
sensory deprivation. They are not the desired result but
indicative of a loosening of belief.

The eyes are then closed and the void is entered as
completely as possible. Some image may be used as a
receptacle of thought if it be not completely annulled. A
visualized shape will do. Hopefully this too can be

69

allowed to fade, leaving Kia hovering in an immensity.
From this condition of transcended desire it can hurl itself
into any form of magic. Inspiration or atavisms can be
dredged up from recondite corners of the awareness by
sigils; will and perception can be extended into new
dimensions.

If the foregoing proves insufficient to achieve gnosis, the
magician stands on tip toe, eyes closed with arms locked
behind, the neck stretched and the back arched, the whole body
straining to the limit. The breathing becomes deep and
spasmodic as the crucifixion continues. Oblivious to
everything except the strain and tension which rack his entire
being, he may attain the Void, as this too is suddenly removed
and he falls exhausted supine to the floor.

The
Death
Pasture

Norma/
Congress

#

i^

4©

Reverse

Congress,

Arud or

Oral

Autoerotic
Congress

Death Posture
Normal Congress
Autoerotic Congress
Reverse Congress

Transcendence )
Inspiration )
Reification )
Exhaustion ) of Desire

Figure 8. The Quadriga Sexualis and their magical uses.
70

At this point he evokes the sensation of laughter. Reflecting on
the meaninglessness of anything as he becomes conscious of it,
he laughs aimlessly at everything. He may be granted the grace
of being swept up onto the divine madness of ecstatic
laughter.

The death posture is chief among the rites of Thanateros for it
can be applied to inspire, reify, and exhaust, as well as
transcend, desire.

Normal congress, the genital embrace of persons of opposed
sexes, should in any manifestation, magical or not, inspire the
participants with something, if only mutual attachment.
Employed magically it can provide amplified inspiration for
almost anything.

The lunar current of the priestess is observed for a day in
which the libido is strong. In the priest, the libido is
strengthened by conservation. Retiring to the place of working,
each attains the silence of the mind by any favored method. For
example, they may kneel before each other in the dragon
position and perform the preliminaries of the death posture.
Then they become conjoined in a stimulatory embrace. As
congress occurs the subject for inspiration or its sigil is
meditated on as the mountain of excitation is gradually
climbed. As the final step is taken the desire is abandoned to
the subconscious. After the cataclysm the celebrants aim to
remain vacuous but alert, to allow the inspiration to manifest.
The reification, or making real, of a desire is possible through the
autoerotic mode of the quadriga sexuahs. In this the mind is
kept blank while the sexuality is ignited and brought to a pitch
by touch alone. The body is in a supine position, eyes closed
with all other senses annulled as far as possible. As the initiate
climbs the mountain of excitation the mind must reject all
images and fantasies. As the body goes into the orgasm phase,
and in the seconds following, the whole force of the will and
perception is focused on the desire, or more conveniently, its
sigil. In that brief instant when he is no more, the alignment is
made, the obsession formed, the demon bom, or the sigil
charged, his will sent forth.

71

Eroto-comatose lucidity is a variant of this form of congress in
which the desire is to reach the borderland state between
consciousness and unconsciousness through which the
subconscious images and divinatory impressions flow. The
sexuality is stimulated again and again and if need be, again
and again and again until the consciousness slips into the
shadow world. In practice the body should be neither too tired
nor too comfortable, so preventing the unconsciousness of
deep sleep. The body may be unable to sustain many orgasms,
particularly if male. Karezza, excitation stopping short of orgasm
but repeatedly approaching it, may be employed. Exhaustion of
desire is a magical process which works on the principle that
wished-for events so often seem to occur after we have
forgotten about them consciously. It is because the life force
then acts through the aetheric tensions we first created, but of
which we are no longer aware. The chosen desire is concentrated
on through all phases of the arousal, discharge and aftermath of
these forms of congress for as bng as it takes until the mind
begins to react against or get sick of it.

The conscious desire, rather than any sigilized form of it,
should be used. As soon as the reaction against the desire begins
to manifest, the whole thing is banished from the mind ty a
forcible turning of the attention to other matters. Conscious
desire and reaction annulled, the desire will manifest at some
time in the future.

72

RANDOM BELIEF

Various stages in the belief cycle of the self are provided in the
following sections. Try each or any of them for a week, a
month, or a year. This exercise may save one an unnecessary
incarnation or two. It may also help to make clear the aeonic
mechanism which creates the various psychic milleniums of
past and future history. The beliefs are gven in order, with
Number 1 understood to follow on from Number 6 in a circle.
Atheism and Chaoism are presented in both their early and
degenerate phases to make clear the stages of change, and to
permit the use of the sacred cube.

Dice Option Number 1: Paganism

The gods show themselves in all things. In the elements,
tempestuous and placid by turns; in the seas, the mountains,
the green fields, in the hail and in the lightning. They show
themselves as various animals and they show themselves in
metals and in stones. Most of all they show themselves in the
mind of man impelling him to love, to war, to fortune, or to
disaster. The gods watch over everything in the world; there is
no thing not under the auspices of some god or other.
For in all things there is both substance and essence. The gods
came out of Chaos, and from the gods came the essences of all
things — some gods giving essences to some things and others
to different things. Man contains the essences of all the gods.
What is good or what is ill is what is pleasing or displeasing to the
gods. But what is pleasing to Mars may not please Venus.
Hence there is war in heaven even as there is war in man. Yet
by making an appropriate invocation or offering we may set
matters aright and gain their favors. If we hve always in
devotion to our patron god and do not displease the others
overmuch, our shade will go at death to rejoin the essence of
its deity.

73

Dice Option Number 2: Monotheism

There is but One God who created everything.

He created man in his own image.

He gave man free will to do good or evil.

Good is what pleases God, evil displeases him.

After you die God will reward or punish you

For pleasing or displeasing him.

God also created angels and demons.

These are spirits with free will,

Some remained good, some became evil.

These spirits help man to become good

Or tempt him to do evil.

If you stop doing something evil

God will be pleased.

If you stop doing something you enjoy

For God's sake, he is also pleased.

You may pray to God and ask him for help.

You may worship him with prayer also.

By this he will be pleased.

To know how to be good and please God

You must obey the teachings

And the authority of the religious hierarchy

He has established on earth

As the one true religion.

Dice Option Number 3: Atheism

The idea of God or a personal soul is an hypothesis we have no
need of. Besides there is not the slightest scrap of material
evidence that will stand up to examination. Let's stick to what's
real, shall we?

There is always some sort of a reason or explanation for
everything even if we haven't managed to work it all out yet.
But we're doing pretty well. I mean, you've only to look
around yourself, the whole universe works on a sensible cause
and effect basis; it's only hocus pocus if you're too primitive to
work out how it works. Free will, for instance, is probably just an
illusion caused by some defect in the neuroelectro-biochemical
plumbing in the brain. But we'll all go on using it till we find
out. After all, enjoyment is the whole point in ife. The only

74

sort of morality or law worth having is that which stops fools

from spoiling their own or other people's enjoyment in the

long run.

And when you're dead, you're dead.

Until we find evidence to the contrary.

Dice Option Number 4: Nihilism (Late Atheism)

Material causality is everything. Science can probably explain
away everything. There is nothing which is not caused by
something else.
But this is no-explanation.

The world now seems accidental, arbitrary, and without
meaning. We can know How everything happens but there is
no reason Why. The universe has become predictable but
meaningless. That is the burden of intelhgence, of being able
to see through it all. There is obviously no spirit or personal
survival after death. Hence there is no reason to do anything, or
for that matter, to restrain from doing anything. Even this is to
deceive ourselves for there is no such thing as free will. One
cannot help but get involved in doing because one happens to
be. All motivation is just an attempt to put the body-brain in a
lower energy, less tense state, even if by a roundabout route.
There are no absolutes in terms of importance, goodness,
meaning or truth that do not arise from the accidental structure
of the body brain and its surroundings.

We are just living out the chaotically complex forces which
spawned us and which will one day reduce us to nothingness
again.

Everything we will ever do is just a result of how we are made
and what happens to us. For all our pretense of free will, we are
an accident running a fixed but unknown course.

75

Dice Option Number 5: Chaoism

As above, so below

I am the universe

The hfe force in us

Is the hfe force of the universe

The subtle force in us (aether)

Is the subtle force of the universe

The gross matter in us

Is the gross matter of the universe

To Chaos, nothing is true

And everything is permitted

Though it has limited itself

To the principle of duality

In building this world

for itself.

(For a further elucidation of these beliefs consult The Book of
Chaos in its entirety.)

Dice Option Number 6: Superstition (Low Chaoism)

All phenomena having come from the one source, there exist

mysterious connections between things with similarities.

All like things contain the same signature or essence; they

share the same spirit. This essence or spirit can be made to go

into other things by bringing the signature-bearing objects into

contact with whatever is being treated. This is the principle of

contagion.

All things being connected in diverse, mysterious ways, one can

take augury from anything about anything of which it reminds

one. There is nothing that is not an omen about something else

to him that but has the wit to know it.

And by similar wisdom, anything can be affected by performing

the required action on some other thing that reminds one of it.

Like attracts like, the principle of similarity.

Wisest of all are those who know the most deeply hidden

connections. They are able to be reminded of the obscure by

76

the more obscure. They know what sacrifices are to be made to
adjust or placate the essences of things. Morahty is the
avoidance of misfortune. One's next incarnation will be as
whatever creature of which one's activity in life is most
reminiscent.

77

THE ALPHABET OF DESIRE

Except for the curious condition of laughter, which is its own
opposite, emotion follows a dual pattern — love and hate, fear
and desire, and so on. The following Alphabet of Desire
includes all the basic root emotions arranged as complementary
dualisms in a form suggestive of the classical gods, or Ruach
of Kabbala.

Pagan philosophers saw human qualities mirrored in nature and
cast these giant reflections of themselves as gods. It is therefore
unsurprising that most pagan cosmologies contain a complete
spectrum of our psychology in god form.
The main divisions of emotion have been equated with
planetary god forms. Each of these principles manifests in three
important forms represented here by the alchemical principles
of

Mercury jf_ Sulphur

Z\ and Salt f )

^p or Earth \^_^V

The Mercurial (exalting, spiritual) form indicates the
cathartic, ecstatic, gnostic mode. Over- stimulation of any
emotive function creates a mental paroxysm in which the whole
consciousness may be caught up. This is experienced as a great
release or catharsis, and at higher levels, ecstasy. Finally, the
one -pointed consciousness essential to mysticism and magic
may supervene in which the life force can act directly. The
gnostic condition is also the key to radical changes of belief or
conversion. Any belief presented in this condition is likely to be
retained due to the hypersuggestibility of the vacuous state of
the mind.

The Sulphurous (quickening, active) form indicates the
ordinary basic drives to copulate, to destroy, to be attracted by
favorable stimuh and repelled by harmful ones. This is the
normal functional mode of the emotion from which the
ecstatic and earthly modes are derived.

78

Table 2. Emotional Duality

Coagula

Solve

The principle of
attraction, coming
together.

The principle of
repulsion, separation,
avoidance.

Sex

€

^

Dtiach

Love

?

s

Hate

Dtsirc

%

?

Fe^r

Pkasure
El£)tmn

V
A

A
V

Pain

DtprcssJon

The Earthy (heavy, sluggish) form is evoked when an emotion
is baulked of expression or becomes tainted with an admixture of
its opposite. It turns in on itself rather than seek fulfillment in
action or esctacy.

The greater duality which rules all emotions is shown in
Table 2. Figure 9 on page 78 shows us that the root of every
emotion is always its opposite.

Armed with this self-knowledge, the magician may ever ride the
shark of his desire across the ocean of the dual principle to a
gratuitous ecstasy. Anticipating the earthy disfunctional modes,
he may transmute their energies and obtain his satisfaction in
other forms. (An alternative desire or its sigil is made the focus
of concentration in the climate of a negative emotion, it will
soon be realized.)

The twenty-one principles have each been given a simple
pictorial glyph and a one word mnemonic. The glyphs can be
employed in various spells and sigils, but the words are mostly
quite inaccurate attempts to capture a feeling. The twenty -
one principles can be equated with the Trumps of the Tarot if
desired. Kia is equated with the Fool.

79

o

Figure 9. The root of every emotion is always its opposite.

80

There is additionally a supplementary alphabet of four princples
to cover the somatic emotions of the pain/pleasure and

&3t /# / O DeoA

m

The force which creates is also that which destroys. The
cellular mechanisms which make reproduction and growth
possible are also those which cause ageing and death.

Release ^Ci I A _fo Dissoiwtion

^1^

(Glyphs: escape from the dual condition, implosive conjunction)

The death posture includes all trances intended to bring the
mind to complete stillness. Concentration on a single stimulus,
a thought, an image, a sight or a sound may hasten the effect of
removing all other stimuli. At the moment of the most
profound and utter stillness the magician controls his
universe.

Sexuality most often brings man a fleeting glimpse of ecstacy.
The magician first observes chastity for a period. Then he
takes every measure to bring himself to the highest point of
excitation. Ordinary lust is transcended, having served its
purpose; the consciousness soars to new peaks of excitation and
may pass into something else altogether.

(Glyphs: antagonism, sexual conjunction)

Lust, the impulse to seek sexual union, is a necessary function of
the organism and remarkable only in the staggering variety of
fetish objects to which it can be directed. Blood-lust and the
urge to wanton destructiveness serve few useful purposes. Their
existence is inexphcable except in dual terms. The desire for

81

union with various things and persons is co-existent with an
equally strong desire for separation from various phenomena.
In extreme forms this manifests as the desire to lay waste to
certain aspects of one's universe with a frenzy which parodies
sexual lust.

n /^ Atrophy JL^ /H\ Fru^triition Q (f
(Glyphs: loss of form by dissolving, failure of conjunction)

As frustration is baulked lust, so is the boredom, laziness,
depression, and self-disgust of atrophy a failure to destroy or
separate oneself from undesirable events. The attempt to
capitalize one's lust or destructiveness by indulgence for
entertainment is also a sure evocation of frustration and
atrophy.

?/¥

Fear Sr / ^4^ Desire

May it not be that our wished-for treasure islands lay precisely
within those images of horror and revulsion we normally
reject?

U ^-T/ir

Joy

(Glyphs: black pit of fear, upward, outward leaping)

Fear, if pushed to a high pitch rapidly, will paralyze the mind.
Strange alternative magical perceptions may then sometimes
be glimpsed; and the will, if focused on a single objective, is
mighty. Terror as a tool of magic is an essential ingredient of
many initiatory and mystic schools.

82

The gnosis of joy is more difficult to attain, but a flight of
geese against a sunset, contemplation of religious imagery
or ntense nostalgia, have, for some, been enough to tip the
scales of mystic perception.

9 ^ Fri^t 9^1 (^ Attraction ^ JL

(Glyphs: being attacked, coming together)

The normal reactions to threatening or inviting stimuli. Such
commonplace feelings require little comment save that in a
civilization such as ours far removed from natural phenomena,
almost all fears and desires are socially induced or imaginary.

(Glyphs: inescapable unpleasantness, engulfing)

As a sage once observed, desire is the cause of sorrow. These are
important dualities for "civilized" society. Aversion designates
the anguish, misery, sorrow, grief or embarrassment of being
unable to separate oneself from phenomena of fear because of
past desire. Conversely, greed is the condition of being
unable to satisfy desire because of past fears. Daily do our
greed and fear assume grotesque and bizarre proportions.

Hate ^* / S^ Love

c?/?

Seeking to avoid violence we have made a virtue of suppression
of anger. This damages the emotional constitution. Denying
oneself anger, one loses all the rapture of love. Be ye men and
women of great passions.

83

Anger

±/A-- I?

(Glyphs: transcending rage, flame of passion)

Raging anger is rarely violent and never effectively violent.
Ask any warrior. Giving vent to mild anger is cathartic; the head
is cleared of tensions, and the body relaxes. Raving blind rage
is a magical state of mind. It is useful for casting one's will
upon the universe and may, for skilled practitioners, be a
gateway to trance states.

Entrancement is also a feature of rapture. Bhakti yoga, the way
of love of a god, has parallels in Western mysticism. The force of
all-consuming love may carry one into the power of the mystic
void.

^ ^ Aggress ^^JQ^ Possum ^^

(Glyphs: a weapon, embracing)

Passionate devotion to one's mate, offspring, and tribe is as
natural as the impulse to give battle to thieves, enemies,
competitors and predators. Now that society's aggression has
been institutionalized on the national scale, it has to be
ritualized on the personal and regional scale as sport.

^^ ^^ Loathing \Sj j f^\ Atxachmmt kJ jT

(Glyphs: anger turned inward, useless appendage)

The condition of loathing results from being unable to forget,
avoid, or destroy an object of hate. That is, one is unable to
break one's attachment to it. Attachment itself is a form of love
in which the loved becomes a mere useless appendage when

84

passion is baulked of fulfillment and a partial reaction, an
element of loathing, ah entered on.

Laughter f*j / ^J Lau^Uer

o/o

(Glyph: concealed at the center of the mandala)

Rejected by science which cannot explain it away, derided by
religion whose piety it deflates, used only to embarrass
pretention in art and philosophy, verily it is a tool of magic. In
the ecstatic laughter of men I see their volition toward
release.

f»J^^ Deconceptualizfiition i Jr

(Glyph: downward flashing lightning splitting asunder)

Shattering of one's expectations is the device of all the best
humor. The Archbishop loudly farts; the free energy of our
destroyed beliefs manifests as laughter. This function is
protective. If we did not laugh at our broken expectation, we
would go mad eventually. By the amoral cultivation of
laughter, the magician can shrug off all losses and avoid entering
averse states altogether if he wishes. Crying is an infantile form
of deconceptualization, laughter, designed to protect the eyes
and summon assistance.

fO ^y^ Conceptuahzation A K

(Glyph: a receptacle for conception)

Another form of wit, the pun, depends on forging a connection
between two ideas. An infinite series of weak jokes of this kind
relies on liberating the free energy of surprise when the penny

85

drops. The "aha!", "eureka!" reaction of discovery is the same
emotion, and its enjoyment is what impels people to meddle
with sciences, kabbala, and even crossword puzzles. This
functional mode impels us to thought and discovery; it is the
motivation for intellection.

Union

1*1

(Glyph: double upward flashing lightnings of cancellation)

The ecstatic laughter of divine madness is the sweeping up of
every perception into a vortex of surprise at its very existence.
Everything is suddenly and amazingly not as it was. Yet
simultaneously it seems more exactly as it was than before!?
Conceptuahzation and deconceptuahzation occur
simultaneously. Language descends inevitably to the paradoxical
as one is swept up into the ecstacy.

Such usually accidental paroxysms may be cultivated by
forms of the death posture and by willful evocation of laughter
on encountering all things.

Some emotional states depend more on the activation of the
purely physiological rather than the psychological responses.
These are dealt with in a supplementary alphabet. The
supplementary alphabet of the somatic emotions (shown in
figure 10) corresponds to the four elements: earth, air, fire
and water.

86

EJation Pain

A\

A A

^9

■tf/^

Pleasure Depre^ion

Figure 10. Supplementary Alphabet in Malkuth,
the somatic emotions

No emotion is a purely mental event; all emotions are
dependent on complex chemical and nervous reactions to
environment. The somatic (body) emotions however may be
recognized as having a more direct rektionship to the senses
and general tone of the nervous system. The ecstatic functional
and negative modes of each state will be discussed under general
headings. The somatic emotions are intimately associated with
the larger alphabet. Depression is linked with many of the
earthly modes, and pain or pleasure with most of the functional
modes. These linkages are two-way, in that a stimulation of
one may evoke the other and vice versa.

/\ Pain Q) /'Pr' PJeosure ^

(Glyphs: penetration, gentle touch)

Instinctive movements toward or away from stimuli of various
types and intensity are linked with the emotions of pleasure and
pain. The range of such instincts is very limited — attraction
toward softness, warmth, and bland tastes; repulsion from
injury, temperature extremes, and acrid tastes.

87

Over- stimulation of these emotions leads to ecstatic states.
This is difficult to achieve for pleasure, but pain has magical
application in rites of initiation, purification and sacrifice.
Complete agony is ecstacy.

Hedonism, the search for gratuitous pleasure, inevitably
leads to an epicurianism of pain. The hedonist rapidly falls
back into indulging progressively more poisonous, revolting,
and debilitating pleasures to provoke a reaction from his
exhausted senses. Hedonism and masochism exhaust
themselves uselessly into the numbed greyness of dulled
faculties.

(Glyphs: sagging, rising upon itself)

88

Figure 11. This shall be my Kabbala.

89

The general condition of the nervous system depends on
health and the emotions going on within it. Emotions of the
ecstatic mode enliven the system and cause a general elation.
Those tending toward the earthy model of baulked or
frustrated emotions cause a general depression.
Such feelings are generally called happiness or misery. The
"dark night of the soul" which follows after certain forms of
mystic exaltation is simply the general tone of the
neuroendocrine system swinging wildly from elation to
depression.

Mere ideas follow suit.

By the alphabet of desire is explained our "inability to make
progress in emotional terms." We are ever confined by the
dualities of pleasure/pain or happiness/misery, no matter how
ingeniously we manipulate our environment.
Lament not that men suffer war, fear, pain, and death, for
these are but the inevitable accompaniment to love, desire,
pleasure, and sex. Only laughter can be gotten away with for
free. Some have sought to avoid suffering by avoiding desire.
Thus they have only small desires and small sufferings, poor
fools. The wise seek satisfaction in that which repels as well as
that which attracts. Plunging into experience thus, we may be
partakers of the dual ecstacy forever and ever. (See figure 11.)
Even if satisfaction of some emotion be baulked and we are
unable to rise above it to ecstacy, then it is possible to
transmute the trapped energy for other purposes. Whatever it is
that we were emotional about should be forgotten, and another
desire, magical or mundane, should be substituted for it. Even
the desire for laughter can be substituted. It will soon be
realized.

There is no escape from the cycle of desire, but armed with
such knowledge a measure of freedom of desire may be won.
The Alphabet of Desire may be called the Arena of Anon, for
when Kia attains complete anonymity — freedom from
identification — it may wander the alphabet as it wills.

90

THE MILLENIUM

Humanity has evolved through four major states of
consciousness, or aeons, and a fifth is on the horizon. The first
aeon comes out of the mists of time. It was an age of Shamanism
and Magic when the rulers of men had a firm grasp of the
psychic forces. Such forces conferred a high survival value on
puny naked man living in intimate communion with the
dangers of a hostile environment. This form of consciousness
has left its mark in the various underground traditions of
witchcraft and sorcery. It has also survived in the hands of
several aboriginal cultures in which the powers were used to
enforce social conformity.

The second Pagan aeon arose with a more settled way of life as
agriculture and city dwelling began. As more complex forms of
thought arose and men moved further away from nature, the
knowledge of psychic forces became confused. Gods, spirits,
and superstition uneasily filled the gaps created by loss of
natural knowledge and man's expanding awareness of his own
mind.

The third, or Monotheistic, aeon arose inside of the pagan
civilizations and swept their old form of consciousness away.
The experiment was begun once in Egypt but failed. It really
came into its own with Judaism and later with Christianity and
Islam, which were offshoots of this. In the East, Buddhism was
the form it took. In the monotheistic aeon men worshipped a
singular, idealized form of themselves.

The Atheistic aeon arose within Western monotheistic
cultures and began to spread throughout the world, although
the process is far from complete. It is far from being a mere
negation of monotheistic ideas. It contains the radical and
positive notions that the universe can be understood and
manipulated by careful observation of the behavior of material
things. The existence of spiritual beings is considered to be a
question without any real meaning. Men look toward their
emotional experience as the only ground of meaning.
Now some cultures have remained in one aeon while others
have swept forward, but most have never completely freed

91

themselves of the residues of the past. Thus sorcery tainted
pagan civihzations and even our own. Paganism taints
Cathohcism, and Protestantism. The time required for a
leading culture to break through into a new aeon shortens as
history progresses. The Atheistic aeon began several hundred
years ago. The Monotheistic aeon began two and a half to three
thousand years ago. The Pagan aeon began about six thousand
years ago with the beginnings of civilization, while the first
Shamanistic aeon goes back to the dawn of humanity.
There are signs that the fifth aeon is developing exactly
where it might be expected — within leading sections of the
foremost atheistic cultures.

The evolution of consciousness is cyclic in the form of an
upward spiral. The fifth aeon represents a return to the
consciousness of the first aeon but in a higher form.
Chaoist philosophy will again become a dominant
intellectual and moral force. Psychic powers will increasingly
be looked to for solutions to man's problems. A series of general
and specific prophecies may be extrapolated from current
trends to show how this will come about, and what role the
niuminati will play in it.

Decades, possibly centuries, of warfare lie ahead. The remnants
of monotheism are collapsing fast, despite the odd revival,
before secular humanism and consumerism. The technological,
atheist super-states are trying for a stranglehold on human
consciousness. We are entering a phase which may become as
oppressive to the spirit as medieval monotheism. The
production/ consumption equation is becoming increasingly
difficult to grasp or balance as the consumer religion of the
masses begins to dictate politics.

More and more mechanisms for the forceful regulation of
behavior have to be introduced as population density pushes
individuals to seek ever more bizarre forms of satisfaction in
material sensationalism. The problem with any belief system is
its tenacity and inertia once it is estabhshed and dominant.
The medieval religions murdered millions to protect their own
hegemony. Innumerable crusades, jihads, burnings, and
massacres were committed. In the end no level of persecution
could stave off the inevitable ascendency of Atheism.
Now it is the atheist super- states which are supplying the arms
and dropping the bombs in support of the hegemony of

92

consumer capitalism or consumer communism. And this is
only the beginning. The blind logic of technology and
consumerism will cause alienation, disaffection, greed, and
identity crisis to rise to such catastrophic levels that the
situation may explode into a very destructive war. There may
be a breakdown of society which may take the form of an anti-
technological jihad. These will not resolve the contradictions
of the system but merely introduce a new dark age and slow
the changes down. However momentous these events may
seem, if they happen, they will not affect the movement of
consciousness in the long run. They will only affect its timing.
But the lUuminati must be ready to exploit the changes which
will definitely occur. Among these are:

The Death of Spirituality. Fixed ideas about the essential
spirit or nature of man will be completely abandoned as an
Emotional Technology becomes more refined. Drugs, obscure
sexualities, faddism, strange entertainments, and material
sensationahsm are a preliminary groping toward this end.
Chemicals, electronics, and surgery will only tend to enslave.
Gnosis, the Alphabet of Desire, and other magical methods
tend to liberate.

The Death of Superstition. Prejudice against the possibility of
the occult or supernatural will give away in the face of a
developing Magical Technology. Telepathy, telekinesis, mind
influence, hypnosis, fascination, and charisma will be
systematically examined, refined, and exploited as methods of
control. We may see magicians working behind barbed wire
and in underground cells also.

The Death of Identity. Ideas about a person's place in society,
his role, lifestyle, and ego qualities will lose their hold as the
cohesive forces in society disintegrate. Subcultural values will
prohferate to such a bewildering extent that a whole new class
of professionals will arise to control them. Such a
Transmutation Technology will deal in fashions, in ways of
being. Lifestyle consultants will become the new priests of our
civilizations. They will be the new magicians.

93

The Death of Belief We will abandon all fixed ideas about what
is absolute or valuable and what constitutes morality as a
Psychological Technology develops. Techniques of belief and
behavior modification in the military, in psychiatry, in places
of detention, in propaganda, in the schools and in the media
will become so sophisticated that truth will become a matter
of who creates it. Reality will become magical.

The Death of Ideology. Ideas about what form human
aspiration should take will give way to a science of the
preservation of the control mechanism — government and its
agencies. These may become global or semi- global, but their
primary concern will become preservation of the government,
for or against, the people. Primitive cybernetics will mushroom
into a Political Technology. Governments will be provided
with the choice of either accommodating themselves to co-
ordinating proliferating human variety or seeking to reduce that
variety by repressive measures.

94

LIBER AOM

THE WORK OF THE
ADEPT 2° lOT

95

LIBER AOM

THE RITUALS OF the degree of the adept are secret,
yet they are stated here in the most explicit form
which language permits. Only by perfecting oneself in
the work of the initiate can one attain the empowerment
required to use the techniques of the adept. Anything less than
this leads to failure, disaster, and death. The methods are given
here that some sight of the eventual goal of the work might be
glimpsed.

In the work of the adept the aspirant has risen above the use of
all symbolic systems save reality itself. The playthings of the
initiate — sigils, gods, demons and the instruments of the
sorcerer — he will reabsorb into himself or retain only for
teaching purposes. His need for magical weapons will be
restricted to

jAeiherics

Reincarnation

The
Chaosphere

Tran^ubstantiation

I Aeonics
Figure 12. The schema of Liber AOM.

96

the ceremonial. His tools will be direct prescience and
enchantment. In the lower grades knowledge and ecstacy were
taken as a guide to progress. For the adept only the ability to
work magic is used to measure the increasing strength of his
spirituality. During the work of the adept, the transmutation to
magical consciousness is completed and he becomes one who
liveth Chaos in perpetuity. The force may take him anywhere.
He might decide to project the requisite personality dualities and
gather persons about himself to form autonomous satraps of the
Illuminati. He might simply withdraw his manifestation from
the plane of duality entirely and cease to exist.
For out of Chaos arise the two prime forces of existence, the
solve et coagula of existence. The Light power and the Dark.
The light power is the expanding, outgoing, dualizing,
increasing expression of Chaos, responsible for the new birth,
creation, incarnation, and variety. The dark power is the
contracting, returning, transcending, withdrawing expression
of Chaos, responsible for death, dissolution, reabsorption
simplicity and return to the source.

These twin forces he at the root of all mystic quests and all
forms of magical and mundane action. They are the basic
spiritual principles of the universe. Adherents of one will
always call the other black. Thus the expansion into existence
can as easily be called the dark ascent into matter, and the
withdrawal from existence can be called the return to the
light. But this is mere moral philosophy and ultimately devoid
of meaning. The positive and negative paths of magic converge
and form a unity which itself diverges from the mystic paths.
While mysticism is at the root concerned with following either
the hght power or the dark, magic aims to play the one off
against the other. The magician aims to become a center of
creation and destruction himself, a living manifestation of the
Chaos force within the realm of duality, a complete
microcosm, a god.

The work of the adept is arranged under the headings shown in
figure 12.

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AETHERICS

The aethers in their various degrees of density are the means
by which magic and miracles are effected. The adept may
require these abihties to accomphsh his will on earth, or he may
simply wish to develop them as a test of the mystic abilities.
Operations of this kind may be classified according to the
density and origin of the aetheric forces employed. Operation
of the dense aether is used to accomplish gross feats such as
levitation and the short range occult martial arts. The force
responsible for this resides in the belly just above the navel and
may be extruded in lines of force to any part of the body and to
locations outside the body's surface t) a distance of several
meters. Levitation (which includes the ability to walk on water
and fire, as well as in the air, or at fantastic rates across the earth)
is accomphshed by supporting the body's weight with these
aetheric force lines. In the case of firewalking, the force is
used to repel the heat and flames.

To get these force lines to come from the body, the adept sits
cross-legged on the ground and attempts to jump like a frog
from this awkward position. The exercise is usually conducted
in darkness and the jumps attempted with the lungs fully
inflated. Within as little as three years' practice, one may begin
to learn how to exert the aetheric force against the ground. A
cushion may be used to protect the tissues of the posterior in
the meantime.

Movement of the force within the body is easier to achieve and
most commonly is approached by trying to develop a warmth or
itching sensation at various points. The adept should be able to
free himself from the attack of virtually any form of disease and
ensure longevity by directing the psychic force to any site of
weakness. If the force can be drawn to the hands, then it may be
projected just beyond for healing purposes or to deal fatal blows
to an enemy.

The dense aetheric force is the basis of most superhuman
feats, the abilities of leaping to great height, clinging to smooth
vertical surfaces, the deflection of weapons, and the strength of
madness.

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Operation of the subtle aethers involves the transference of
thoughts and emotions by the agency of the aethers which
normally link the life force to the brain. The simpler the message
and the greater its emotional charge, the more easily is it
projected. As with all things, destructive effects are much more
easily created than constructive ones. The adept may begin to
strengthen his abilities by selecting a small specimen of plant
life and trying to make it wilt and wither by the force of his
unaided will. As it begins to succumb he may reverse the
current of his will and resuscitate it again. He may practice
telepathic contact with various beasts, dogs being particularly
suitable for this purpose. At odd moments he may pick various
persons around him and make them stand up, sit down, or move
around and do particular things. One of the classical tests of
psychic ability is the power of casting an aura of subjective
invisibility about oneself. This does not involve any alteration
in one's optical properties, but surrounding persons are
somehow prevented from noticing one's presence. The
complementary ability to this is the projection of an aura of
charisma or fascination which may have application in the
formation of sundry cults and messianic sects. These powers
arise from a constant, semi-conscious, intense concentration
on the characteristics one wished to project.

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TRANSUBSTANTIATION

The penultimate metamorphosis,

the achievement
of constant magical consciousness

In all things know that
I AM THIS ILLUSION

In all things know also that
I AM NOT THIS ILLUSION

But there is no thing more ineffectual

than to be always
only half in the world and half out of it,

Thus at the moment of one's doing

Be In It^

Identify Completely

Live It

And in the interstices between

all one's doing

Reside in the Void

Be Vacuous

Have No Mind

Know that by this one may attain

to complete freedom

from the consequences of one's actions.

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THE CHAOSPHERE

The Chaosphere is the prime radiant or magic lamp of the
adept — a psychic singularity which emitteth the brilhant
darkness. It is a purposely created crack in the fabric of reality
through which the stuff of Chaos enters our dimension.
Alternatively, it may be considered as a demonstration of the
axiom that belief has the power to structure reality.
The Chaosphere may be given a material form which acts as an
anchor to locate its chaotic and aetheric manifestations. The
shape shown in figure 13 is only one of a number of possibilities.
It consists of a sphere with eight arrows radiant directed toward
the vertices of a cube. Thus to the thinking mind it may be
said to variously represent a perspective sculpture of the four
axes of the geometrically impossible hypercube of the two
interpenetrant tetrahedra of the light and dark forces. Such
twists of illogic may be useful in the creation of an essentially
paradoxical object.

It is colored the deepest black, for this is to give it all colors
simultaneously and to provide it with the greatest potential for
emission and absorption. The central sphere is hollow to
permit the inclusion of various objects, and one of the arrows is
detachable as a magical weapon. However the physical shape
can take any form that the ingenium of the adept suggests; it is
a trifling matter compared to the psychic preparation which
goes into its construction.

The Chaosphere is charged and opened into the magical
dimension by filling it with aetheric life force which has been
paradox modulated.

The hfe force may be supplied by any method over which the
adept has mastery — blood sacrifice, sexual emissions,
projection of the body's aetheric force of transference by
concentration during ecstatic gnostic rites, or by other
methods. The paradox modulation is achieved by imprinting
the life force with all manner of contradiction and
impossibility. Any two opposite and mutually exclusive ideas
or images can be simultaneously employed — the imaginary
metaphysical principles of fire and water, or Nuit and Hadit,

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Figure 13. The Chaosphere.

incompatible geometries, simultaneous blackness and
whiteness, mathematical zero and infinity. Any manifestation
of paradox and possibility can be used, and many different ones
should be made to serve.

If the adept be operating a temple, his initiates and students
may assist in formulating the Chaosphere, and it may then
function as a god or fetish. The more power that is put into it, the
wider will be the breach opened into the Chaos dimension
and the greater will be the free Chaos energy liberated.
Once it is made it will begin to supply raw Chaos force to
anyone coming into physical proximity with it. For this reason
the uninitiated should be kept well away, lest they become
deranged. The sphere also exists as a vortex or door through
which the magical will and perception can reach easily to the
other regions of existence in the manner of a powerful magical
mirror. The erection of operating Chaospheres at various
points about the earth will tend to hasten the immanentization
of the eschaton, the change of aeon.

102

AEONICS

The fifth magical aeon exists only in embryonic form. Its
precise manifestation hangs in the balance. The new Chaoist
aeon may develop into an Aquarian Age or a time of
totalitarian tyranny. (See "Millenium"). As agents of the fifth
aeon Illuminati, adepts may occasionally break their
meditation to alter the course of history. For existence is the
chariot of Chaos, and man the most refined vehicle available.
Adepts may be concerned that the society of men continues to
evolve ever better forms to support the divine incarnation of
Kia on earth.

They may work to build the new aeon's technologies — the
technologies of emotion, belief, magic, transmutation and
politics — which will free men from spirituality, prejudice,
supersitition, identity and ideology.

And they may seek to create cults, orders, covens and cabals to
spread the secret wisdom and to destroy the satraps of old aeon
spirituality and its thought forms.

For the fifth aeon has the potential to be a great renaissance
when mighty deeds will be done upon the earth and Chaoist
philosophy shall hurl men to the comers of the galaxy and into
the very epicenter of their being.
Either that or a new dark age.

103

REINCARNATION

Integral reincarnation is the final metamorphosis. It is the
supreme ritual of sex and death by which adepts attain to the
degree of master.

In the ordinary course of events, the personal aether and life
force of Kia disintegrate as the material body disintegrates.
New beings are built up from the pool of the universal life force
in the same way that they are built up from the universal pool of
matter. The personal life force then finds its way back into
incarnation broken up into millions of parts scattered into
many beings.

The adept magician however will have so strengthened his
spirit by magic that it is possible for him to carry it over whole
into a new body. In an exceptional display of power it may even
be possible to retain specific memories in aether form. It is by
such a process that adepts achieve the final degree of
mastership. The supreme rituals of sex and death exist in three
forms: the Red, Black, and White Rites.

The Red Rite

This rite can only be performed by male adepts and is
performed when the adept's body has become very aged or
damaged. The adept takes a young, strong female and forms a
powerful love bond to her. He impregnates her and then during
the early stages of the pregnancy, within the first two months,
he voluntarily ends his present existence. The powers of the
adept developed in astral travel workings, coupled with the
effects of the love bond to the mother, cause a reincarnation
into the developing fetus. Provision is beforehand made for the
security of the female and the reeducation of the
reincarnating master.

The Black Rite

This rite consists of the forceful entry of a spirit into the body of
an already inhabited being. It is both dangerous and unreliable

104

and used only in certain peculiar and desperate situations. It
will sometimes result in there being a double life force in one
body, if the invading spirit fails to displace the occupant. In
this case the victim will seem to have gone mad. In any case
the memory of the taken- over being remains, and the
invading- being will have to work through this. Of this rite I
have been advised to say no more. . . .

The White Rite

In this rite an integral reincarnation is achieved, but the
receiving body is a fetus randomly selected by the escaping
spirit in astral flight. In the event that one's friends, followers,
and disciples might be unable to locate one's new manifestation
and ensure that it receives a proper magical education, it may be
wise to carry an aetheric marker. At death some sigil
emblematic of one's magical aspiration is fiercely visualized. It
may later be apparent to clairvoyant perception in the aetheric
constitution of the developing infant, or it may serve to cause
some recognition or affinity with the symbol if it is perchance
accidentally stumbled upon in the new existence.

105